Pieces of Lives
by Alinyaalethia
Summary: We know what happened to Rilla during the First World War, but what of her siblings? This story explores the lives of Nan, Di and Faith while away at Redmond during the years of the Great War.
1. Chapter 1

_As ever, the idea may be mine but the characters belong to L.M. Montgomery, and the ones that do not were inspired by her._

 _I would be remiss too if I didn't begin by acknowledging the debt of various writers here whose accounts of Anne's children at Redmond have inspired this story. Thanks too to Formerly Known as J who has patiently been encouraging me to write and tell this story._

* * *

 _S_ _wallowgate_

 _Kingsport,_

 _Sept 1914_

 _Dear mums,_

 _If you've had Walter's letter you'll know we've settled beautifully into Swallowgate. This includes the two fellow first years who answered Faith's advertisement to share the house with us –and not to worry, you can reassure Miss Cornelia and the others that Poppy and Mara couldn't be more race of Joseph-y if they tried. Poppy –she's called Penelope really but not by friends we're told, and hence not by us –is as sleek and dark as a seal, with great grey eyes like an owl's. Mara is tall and yellowy as a golden birch in high autumn. Standing in the garden waiting to show us the house they were all light and dark, and I suppose in a fairytale they'd be divided into contraries, good and ill or day and night, or something Victorian and moralistic . This not being a fairytale -as we are perpetually reminded between the war news and the mundanity of setting up house - they are both radiant with warmth. Poppy especially is sweet, but there's a sparkle to Mara that is subtler, like a champaign bubble. It only surfaces occasionally, but when it does we're always glad. We've only known them weeks, but it feels like always. What was it you used to say about kindred spirits, they were the coming together of souls who had already met? It's that sort of feeling I have about them._

 _Now about the house, as you made me promise faithfully to send you a detailed account of it. No one is sure how Faith got it, and we don't dare ask lest it break the spell and gremlins appear on the doorstep to turn us out. It's not Patty's Place but I venture you'd forgive it the crime if you saw it. It's a funny round house covered in ivy and full of inviting nooks for curling up in and chairs for burrowing. It has a deeply blue door that you would cherish, likewise a wrought-iron fence that looks like sculpted ivy, and a window seat that Faith has taken possession of, I_ _think_ _by asserting her right to it as the person who found us Swallowgate to begin with. Whatever the reason, none of us have tried to wrest it from her as it suits her; whenever she curls up there be it with book or mug of tea or even to tackle ungainly hospital gowns –our latest endeavour for the college Red Cross –she looks as if she was grown there._

 _The woman who let it –a Miss Adelia Lacey – has left behind an old harp, to the delight of Poppy, who can play a little, but won't yet out of a deep-rooted belief she isn't much good. The same woman has gifted to our use a whatnot brimful of green and white china painted with cherry-blossoms. It makes me think of Houseman whenever I see it, you'll know the verse;_

 _Loveliest of trees, the cherry now,_

 _Is hung with bloom along the bough,_

 _And stands about the woodland ride,_

 _Wearing white for Eastertide…_

 _Faith said she took it as a matter of course that I should find verse in something as ordinary as chinaware, Poppy was charmed and Mara bemused. She is really strikingly practical for someone reading drama. I suppose living so feelingly and theatrically all the time would become exhausting._

 _The last of our treasures, though by no means the least, is an absurd pair of porcelain dachshunds. They aren't nearly so dignified as Gog and Magog, and are blue Spode rather than are green spotted, but we still think them sweet and are determined to get their names out of Miss Lacey. Rather less charming is an overwhelming collection of china shepherdesses that inhabit the side-tables. They are decked out in parasols and pastels, and we live in perpetual terror of overturning them. Faith came very near to doing just that the other day, as she whirled through the house draping apple-leaf quilts over the backs of chairs and straightening cushions. Whatever else came of the Merediths' Good Conduct Club, it indisputably made Faith a terrifyingly efficient housekeeper, if not exactly a careful one._

 _The garden more than compensates us for the shepherdesses on their end-tables, or so I think. It is positively peopled with a host of Sycamores. They look like so many women clad in gold at this time of year, and they sigh whenever the wind strikes up. I know this as our room –Di's and mine –overlooks the garden._

 _It's by far the nicest view, bar the turret room. Faith and Poppy, who have the room just next to ours –as the rooms practically trip over one another for inclusion in the house –overlook our eaves and some of the neighbour's garden. We haven't met the occupants of Next Door yet, but already they are the bane of Mara's existence as they don't seem at all fussed about keeping the garden up and its brambles_ _will_ _keep infiltrating_ _our_ _side of the fence. Poppy, who can't be gloomy for more than two minutes together, has pointed out that this probably means brambles for us come summer, but in the meantime it's about trebled the garden work for Mara, who is the only one of us to have much knack and inclination for gardening. She has already bedded down a quantity of herbs in a window box and the time she doesn't spend getting to grips with her parts (it's Feste this term), she is coaxing them to life. Not without success, I hasten to add._

 _The turret room I spoke of is of course Mara's. No one quarrelled with her for it, though it_ _is_ _quaint and circular, and has windows that lay Kingsport at your feet. But if she is isolated away up in that tower the rest of us shan't be kept up while she works late on speeches and character studies for plays, or that's the theory. Certainly so far I've only been faintly aware of her walking the floor as I drift off to sleep at night. Theatre, it turns out, mums, involves a good deal of pacing, and is therefore, or so I conclude, not so different to writing._

 _Di has just looked over and reminded me to reassure you, and therefore Susan, that we have come to an amenable arrangement with regards to the kitchen. It's by far the biggest room in the house, and gets the most light; it is also the draughtiest, and Walter says we have all been having the usual argument_ _backwards_. _He would have it that the custom is for friends to fall out over who cooks due to collective apathy for it, not as we seem to have done out of an excess of inclination. He may well be right. I spent a solid hour our first day here setting everything up as Marilla Cuthbert had used to order things. No sooner had I turned around to start on my trunk, Di was taking it to pieces and reassembling it in the style of Susan Baker. That lasted until Faith got hold of the kitchen and organised it after Mrs. Meredith's habit, which arrangement was short-lived as Mara thereafter went through the cupboards before bed. Poppy had a good go at reassembling it still further, and we were back to the Susan Baker method by breakfast the following day. By lunch it was Mara's kitchen again, and Faith's by dinner. At this juncture Poppy and I bowed out, and by the time the Susan Baker system had reasserted itself, Faith had followed us. If you hear from aunt Diana that Avonlea has been laid low by an unholy whirring sound, it is Marilla Cuthbert spinning in her grave over my lack of fortitude in affairs of the kitchen._

 _We have since been here three weeks and come to a more settled arrangement, to the immense relief of all. Having established that none of us sets or bakes bread to rival Poppy, we leave that chore to her; I'm no good for anything besides baking, as you and Susan know, so have ceded the kitchen completely unless there's a clamour for monkey-face biscuits or lemon loaf; Faith keeps out of it altogether on the basis that in spite of Rosemary Meredith's best efforts it was Una who got all the culinary talent and the best she can do is scald the milk and over-boil the odd egg. (This revelation rather left Poppy and I wondering why she had ever minded so much about which cupboards held what, but it seemed better not to ask.) Di and Mara, who_ _can_ _cook, have between them pulled to pieces and reassembled the kitchen so many times as to make the average person dizzy, and in so doing appear to have reached a tentative agreement about whose territory it rightfully is. There's a sort of rota in place –I think –but none of us dares ask too many questions lest their house of cards be revealed for what it is and come crashing down around our ears in consequence. I know the battle at Marne is grim, but I think the outcome of that particular crisis might well prove worse._

 _Tell Susan I was sorry to hear Doc got into her pantry, and that Poppy reckons he might be kept out if she'd humour with the occasional saucer of milk (in his Doc moods naturally –as Jekyll I don't doubt he'd curdle the milk into next year). Tell her too that whatever the opinions of Cousin Sophia, we at Swallowgate are of the opinion that 'Jims' is by far the most natural and normal thing anyone has called that wee laddie of Rilla's since she brought him home in that soup-tureen! I'm not so silly as to think that will reconcile Susan to the name, but it might appease her._

 _Must bolt now, poor Di has been fussing with the wick of her light for the last five minutes at least, and I hope I know my twin well enough to be able to tell when she wants nothing so much as to curl up and go to sleep. I don't blame her –we've had a long week._

 _Much love ever,_

 _Nan_


	2. Chapter 2

_With thanks for reading and/or reviewing._

* * *

Rosy Faith Meredith was trying to do three things at once with varying degrees of success. Curled up on the window seat in Swallowgate's living room to catch the first light, she was in the first instance attempting to pin a nightshirt, but as she had insufficient space to spread either papers or the constituent parts of the pattern, the fabric bunched and made seam allowance impossible. Simultaneous to this she was running half an eye over a book of French verbs, and that rather absent-mindedly because the bulk of her attention was absorbed in a letter to Una, who in addition to querying the veracity of the latest news reports on Reims (and a petition to send word as to pronunciation for the benefit of Susan Baker), wanted to know the location of Ourcq and what she was supposed to say to Bruce. He had actually asked over breakfast the other day if the Belgian babies were being murdered, and no one had had the least idea what to say, though general consensus seemed to be in favour of the preservation of his innocence. Which was all to the good, Faith thought, except that Una had never been much good at acting a lie –her voice tended to give her away. There was also some question about what a sugar reduction would do to crab-apple preserve, and Faith was sitting on the window seat tackling the problem of Bruce's philosophical soul and her sister's inability to tell a falsehood –having dealt with Reims' pronunciation and the geography of Ourcq all to quickly – because of all life's idiotic quirks that was the problem she felt best equipped to deal with.

'You'll put creases in it that way,' said Poppy mildly, appearing at Faith's elbow and taking in the spectacle of the fabric, the grammar and Una's much-read letter.

'I don't suppose it will matter overmuch,' said Faith a bit ungraciously. She was not by nature a lark, but the swallows that lived in the sycamores and the eaves under the bedroom window she and Poppy shared had curtailed any notions of sleep beyond five that morning by singing their blithe hearts out.

'Can I help?' Poppy came and perched awkwardly on an unoccupied inch or so of window seat, evidently intending to take over the nightshirt. Faith thrust Una's letter into her hand accompanied by the uncontextualised salvo, 'crab-apple preserve, what will reducing the sugar do to it?'

A startled Poppy blinked owlish grey eyes at Faith.

'You'll want to ask Mara that,' she said.

Faith watched as Poppy set the letter down warily, as if it might catch fire at any moment, then deftly took over the nightshirt, spreading the pattern shapes wide on the floor and smoothing the creases away with her hands. At least, Poppy was trying to. Faith was gratified to see that Miss Lacey's collection of end tables was hindering Poppy every bit as much as the limitations of the window seat had restricted her own efforts.

'Like this,' that was Mara, honey-coloured in the morning light, apparently deeming the process of pinning a nightshirt a job for two people. It probably was, Faith thought blearily, most things were at five in the morning. She rather wondered at Mara being so bright-eyed, kneeling there among the pins and the ravelled cotton. Poppy didn't appear to object any more than Faith had her usurpation by another. She sat back on her heels and watched as Mara's broad, long-fingered hands made the flattening of the fabric look effortless. Deciding this was definitely not a job for three people, Faith adjusted her position in the corner of the window seat the better to write her letter, balancing the paper against the French grammar by way of a writing desk. She just remembered to ask for Mara's opinion on the affair of the crab-apple preserve. Mara, with a milliner's trick, shunted pins to the side of her mouth and said around them, 'I shouldn't think it would set.'

'I'll be sure to tell Una you say so,' said Faith and extracted herself from the affair of the nightshirt altogether.

Later Di and Nan augmented them, only too glad, apparently to abandon the finer points of Restoration poetry in favour of sewing. Faith, then neglecting the matter of Bruce's soul in favour of Swallowgate news, never even thought to ask how they had got on to so weighty a subject so early in the morning. This was the Blythe twins, they thrived on 'ologies and isms.'

The girls were long past nightshirts by this time; Mara and Poppy had managed the one, deemed it a fussy thing, quizzed Faith on what had ever possessed her to start on one in the first place and moved on comfortably to bed sheets, some with rather more success than others, or so was Faith's impression when she next looked up from letter-writing. To be strictly fair about it, Di was succeeding at pinning an even hem on the thing, and Poppy was coming along behind with tacking stitches so small and terse as to create puckers. How anyone was going to pick them out was beyond Faith, but at least Poppy was intent on her work. Nan on the other hand, to judge from her murmured commentary on _A Married State_ was presently preoccupied with the nuances of Katherine Phillips' poetry and the paper arising therefrom, the seam she was supposed to be aligning little more than afterthought. Beside her Mara was saying, 'it will come out crooked, if you leave it like that,' and attempting to redo Nan's work without much thought for what constituted a line of centre.

Into this bright-eyed and agreeable disorder came Walter Blythe's disembodied voice from the hallway.

'You'll never guess!'

Before any of the girls had got the chance, Walter had swept in like a whirlwind, dropped a kiss on Nan's nut-brown head, waved to Faith and stumbled dizzily across the room to hail Di before belatedly remembering that he was supposed to be at odds with her and sitting cautiously down cross-legged on the floor a safe distance from the sewing.

'What aren't we guessing?' asked Nan, pausing in her meditations on what was meant by _there's no such thing as leading apes in hell_ and raising her eyebrows at him. 'If it's that _Perennial_ has taken one of your poems, I should think we could have guessed that.'

'It's not that,' said Walter gruffly. He brandished a paper at them and Faith, forgetting the bed sheet spread out like a sail on the floor, leapt for the rolled up newssheet with alacrity, disgorging letter paper, grammar and pen from the nest of her lap while simultaneously overturning spools of thread and sending pins scattering across the floor in the process.

'They haven't taken Paris,' said Walter in a rush before Faith could so much as look above the fold for the latest news. 'The Germans are retreating from Marne.'

At this proclamation, Faith let out a war-whoop to rival even Jem. Poppy, who had been dutifully gathering up the scattered pins, promptly dropped them to stare at Walter, her eyes wider and more owlish than ever. Nan made a noise that might have been a triumphal yell but might again have been a sob, and Mara's hand flew to her mouth, pins and all.

'Have they really,' said she and Di at more or less the same time.

'It's all here,' said Faith, settling on the window seat with the newspaper and beginning to skim the report for details.

'It's only what everyone's been saying,' said Walter, still gruffly. His voice had an uncomfortable greyness to it that prickled Faith's neck with unease –the others too from the looks of them.

'Is it so unbelievable?'

Poppy opened her mouth to explain the incommunicable, and went on to gape like a fish and flap her hands helplessly. Di began to help her, then remembered she and Walter had fallen out and stopped short. Faith rustled the paper to vent her exasperation. Could they not declare peace even in the name of good news? Or was she to be left to try and express the indefinable feeling that had descended on their little Swallowgate set? She had a terrifying feeling that she was.

'Yes,' said Mara succinctly, saving Faith the effort. 'It is. _There is a tide in the affairs of men_ –but we never thought it would come you know, we only hoped.'

Over the top of the paper, Faith directed a smile her way, _thank you_ , passing mutely on the wing. As she turned back to the paper, Faith half-caught Walter shake his head as he took in the spectacle of their sewing for the first time. Nan and Poppy were still scrabbling frantically for the dispersed pins and something like a semblance of order. Faith, who had eschewed their efforts with the bed sheet in the first place on the basis of knowing her limits and being inclined get to grips with her letter to Una while keeping an eye on their fun, made no move to help. She was bothered neither by the pins nor the general chaos, that being, in her book, all part of the necessity of living.

'All this tacking and pinning and stitching,' said Walter, sounding more like the boy of Faith's Rainbow Valley days than he had in a while, 'you set all your stock by it, don't you? Mother says little Rilla does too. Girls who pin hopes, that's what you lot are,' and he even laughed at the pun. They all did. It felt _good_ to laugh after weeks of pacing like so many caged tigers, of treading the floors in dread expectancy. It was Nan who articulated this best, springing from her patch of floor like a jack-in the-box, seriously jeopardising the shepherdesses on the nearest end-table and re-scattering the pins in the process, much to Poppy's dismay, before engulfing her brother in a hug.

'It's _good_ to have you back,' she said into his shoulder.

'Tea,' said Di abruptly. 'We've not had any all day and news like this warrants some in celebration.'

Stepping carefully around Poppy, who was still preoccupied with the scattered pins, and Mara with her sewing, Di rose and made for the kitchen to put tea on.

'I'll help,' said Walter, divining her purpose and before anyone could intervene, he was following her into the kitchen.

* * *

'I take it this is pax then,' said Di, not looking at her brother as she filled the kettle with water.

'If you like. I don't like being at odds with you, Doss.'

'Nor I with you.' She still wasn't looking at him though. It had been a long time since he'd called her that, and it hearkened back to days crammed with poetry and a closeness that had faded almost to an ember. Di stood holding the teapot and trying to remember what that had been like, and finding herself having more success calculating how many tea leaves to measure out on sight.

' _But we (of one another's mind_

 _Assur'd,),'_ quoted Walter softly,

 _'the boistrous world disdain;_

 _With quiet souls, and unconfin'd,_

 _Enjoy what princes wish in vain._ _–_ Pax then?'

Di offered him her hand –thinking all the while _I must shut the water off or it will overrun the kettle and it will hiss one the stovetop –_ and Walter took it, pressing her fingers to his lips. It was the touch of a butterfly in its fleetingness, but it served to bring Di sharply out of the mundane and into the old place of synchronicity and fellowship that had once been theirs.

'I didn't mean to flash at you,' said Di, repentant in her turn as she set the kettle down.

'I knew that –I think. It was all a bit of a muddle, that night at the Harbour Light. People said a lot of things I don't suppose they meant.'

'And quite a few they did.' Energy high-strung and palpable crackled between them as Di took the kettle off the hob and began rootling in the pantry for something to offer by way of sustenance to their guests. None of them had eaten, if Walter had, and the shock of good news had brought this suddenly home to Di. Anyway, it was the form of the thing that mattered; not for nothing had she been brought up by Susan Baker. Guests should and would be offered something to eat at the very least –always supposing there _was_ anything to offer. There was. A fruitcake surfaced improbably in the cupboard over the breadbox; Mara would have put it there, Di thought with amusement. She herself had meant the cupboard for the larger crockery, all the Inglesideans having been trained on cake tins for their cakes, as had Faith if she had stopped to think much about the kitchen since settling in, which she hadn't. Nor had Poppy; she had been too taken up with accruing a sufficient store of wood for the impending cold snaps to give much thought to the kitchen as more than somewhere to set her bread to rise, though not much else –why she even kneaded it out in the living room at the large scrub pine table. Di cut the fruitcake into slices that might have done well as doorstops, and looked up from arranging them on a platter to find Walter performing an excavation of the kitchen cupboards.

'I was looking for teacups for you,' he said on catching sight of her uplifted eyebrows.

'Well they're not in there,' said Di, going to a rack over the sink whence a stack of frilled cherry-blossom teacups lived.

'So I gathered.' He smiled at her. ' _But now I find how dear thou wert to me;_

 _That man is more than half of nature's treasure…_ It's good to be friends again.'

'We'll not fall out over _that_ , anyway,' said Di, pausing to kiss his cheek before leading the way back to the others, who were still, so it seemed, embroiled in piecing news and pinning hopes.

* * *

 _*The first of Walter's quotes comes from 'A Retir'd Friendship' by Katherine Phillips, the second from 'Friendship' by Hartley Coleridge._


	3. Chapter 3

_With thanks for reading and/or reviewing. I always love to hear what you think._

* * *

Poppy had not meant to acquire a cat. Or if she had, she wasn't at all sure she'd have settled on one so much abused as the specimen of a cat that appeared scratching at the back door one October morning early, when the sky was on fire with sunrise and the sycamores rattling like bones in the background. He had lost three-quarters of one ear, and what was left of the other was much battered; his tail was kinked with missing patches of fur, and what fur he did have was so burred as to suggest he had traipsed not only through the next door garden but the better part of a wilderness to reach them. No, Poppy hadn't meant to adopt him, and she certainly hadn't meant particularly to give him a saucer of milk. She _had_ though, because he'd been singing most earnestly for his supper, and Poppy had to concede that she was as much a friend to cats as she was to other creatures. Besides, the chipped saucer on the whatnot had been crying out for a purpose ever since they arrived, and now it had one. And the cat had looked so _glad_ of the milk that surely that had made it all right?

That was the first visit. He came after that, once in the morning and again in the evening with a regularity that suggested that his brain, if dissected would reveal a timetable, or perhaps a clock at its heart. He never let her near enough to remove the burrs though; Poppy had tried on various occasions, as had Faith when she stumbled across him for the first time. Poppy watched delighted as Faith sat down on the coconut matting, smoothed her skirt and offered a finger to the wary inky entity that made pilgrimage twice a day through Kingsport to arrive at Swallowgate's back door. No luck. He had arched his back and crossed his paws, and trotted away, only to return the following morning, yellow eyes gleaming eerily in the fog and demand his usual portion of milk, no grooming please, thanks very much all the same.

By November he looked less like a matted sable scarecrow –though still burred – and had become a habit. Even Nan and Di had run across and been charmed by him on occasion. They sat out on the back stoop, and finding from Faith that he spoke none of her modern languages, Nan tried him on a steady diet of Kippling's verse, and discovering him oblivious, moved on through all the major poets of import. It was in fact one of her evening talks with the cat that occasioned the creation of what the girls later came to call 'Nan's economies.'

They were sitting together on the back step watching him solemnly wash his paws after devouring a saucer of milk, when Nan suddenly said, 'now that looks like a luxuriant bath. See him stretch? I wouldn't say a word against our tin one, but honestly, if I had could have any extravagance I wanted, it would be a proper bath, with a gas heater to see to the water, and space to stretch out in, and read, and dream.'

'I'd settle heavy curtains that kept the light out,' said Faith, getting into the spirit of the thing. 'The better to lie in bed of a Saturday morning and be properly lazy –maybe dream a little myself. What about you, Mouse?'

Poppy rather thought she would most like an oven that drew evenly.

'Darling Mouse,' said Nan laughing, much to the consternation of what was rapidly becoming their cat, 'of course you would. You're ever practical. Now wish something for _you_.'

'But I have,' said poor Poppy, and they all laughed.

It was, as Di said an ingenious piece of economy, a way of having things without spending money on them; when they wanted for anything they wished for it and bestowed it upon some fictive other, with the end result that what had begun as castles-in-the-air turned into stories spun wholecloth by Nan about an English Lord with a taste for fine clothes and rare foods, who lived on an English estate in some unspoilt part of that green and pleasant land.

'What do you suppose he looks like,' said Poppy to Faith one evening, as they came up to bed picking apart the latest adventures of Lord Theodore Edgeworth Oliver Harrington.

'Like Jerry, I should think, to go from Nan's descriptions. She's quite mad, but the stories are a treat, so I forgive her.'

'That's your brother, isn't it?' said Poppy, sitting down on her bed and beginning to comb out her hair. There were girls at the university –she'd seen them –who'd had their hair shorn short, and it was tempting, but Poppy's soul quailed at the thought of what her mother would do should she return at Christmas with her hair all cut off, so she wore it long, and counted out her hundred strokes faithfully each evening.

'Mm,' said Faith drowsily, 'there's a picture somewhere, shall I look?'

Poppy opened her mouth to say there was no need, but Faith had already bounded over to her desk and was even then riffling through the clutter. She surfaced triumphant, just as Poppy was tying her hair off with a ribbon.

'Here you are,' she said, sitting down beside Poppy. She tapped her finger over the glass just where it showed a dark-haired young woman with a pointed chin.

'Una,' said Faith. 'She's the one I'm forever writing to without knowing what to say. You'd get on, you're very like her.'

Then, moving her finger along the frame she pointed out Carl and Jerry in turn.

'And what about your Jem?'

'Taking the photo.'

'That'll be what you're looking at then, rather than the camera.'

Faith elbowed Poppy gently in the ribs. 'I _am_ looking at the camera.'

'Well…if I squint –ow!' for Faith's elbow had found Poppy's kidney this time.

'Sorry Mouse. Come on, it's late, and if I could have any luxury I wanted I guess it would be a feather bed but as I can't, I'll settle for a quilt vintage of Cornelia Bryant and a good pillow. See that that cat of yours doesn't serenade us awake tomorrow, won't you?'

Poppy tried to protest that he was not her cat, but in vane, Faith was already asleep.

Besides, he _had_ begun to feel like her cat –at least he felt like Poppy's cat according to Poppy. She rather suspected that had they asked, the cat would have titled his head and informed them that on the contrary, Poppy was his human, or words to that effect. Consequently Poppy was genuinely surprised when on a particularly gruesome morning, when the wind was bending the sycamores low to the ground and great gouts of rain blew sideways at the house, Mara appeared at the top of the stair and catching the screen door open, and the cat on the stoop, said in perplexity, 'Mouse, _what_ is that?'

'A cat,' said Poppy, who though prepared to concede her cat was perhaps the most battered and bedraggled cat in Kingsport, possibly in Canada, thought he was at least recognisably one of his species.

'Pilgrim,' said Faith laconically from the window seat at about the same moment.

'It has a name?'

'Faith's idea,' said Poppy.

'We won't chloroform him,' said Faith staunchly, knowing the mythology of Patty's Place as well as any Ingelsidean. She had relayed some of it to Poppy too, over late-night pow-wows on the bedroom carpet, or nestled under Faith's log cabin quilt, which was why only Mara looked astonished by this remark.

'Aren't you keen on cats?' Faith asked, abandoning her battle with a cabled jumper the better to take in Mara's answer.

'Not that exactly,' said Mara, managing to sound as if it was exactly that. 'Where –where's this one _come_ from?'

'Somewhere,' said Faith helpfully, waving the beginnings of a cabled jumper in the general direction of Kingsport's town centre. 'We did try to find out,' she elaborated, gold eyes shining with unholy glee, 'but he doesn't speak French, or Italian, or German –not that I have much of that in any case –and neither Mouse nor I speaks Cat.'

'Mm.' Mara sat down on the third stair from the bottom of the set and regarded Pilgrim doubtfully.

Out of what Poppy could only suppose sheer contrariness that creature abandoned his milk pre-emptively, nosed his way past Poppy and with an audacity worthy of emulation by any soldier, took a flying leap and settled himself comfortably on Mara's shoulder. Poppy and Faith, if he didn't, braced themselves against an impending flash that didn't come.

'You've got claws,' said Mara regally to Pilgrim. 'You wouldn't by any chance consider retracting them?'

Faith had, Poppy saw, gone back to her cables, no doubt the better to cover her amusement. Devoid of such a useful diversion herself, Poppy bent intently over the abandoned saucer, half thinking it might convince Pilgrim to leave his perch. It didn't. He sat on Mara's shoulder and surveyed his territory, and calmly let Poppy retreat into the kitchen with the milk.

'Minerva had an owl,' she heard Faith say as she went, 'and we have our Mouse –you do wear him well, Mara, considering.'

Safely ensconced in the kitchen, Poppy burst out laughing over the absurdity of the situation. Then she cast about for her bread dough, saw that it had risen nicely and put it into the oven with a clatter that served to dislodge Pilgrim from Mara's shoulder and sent him bolting out into the garden, where he contented himself with nosing at the window boxes.

'It's next door that has mint,' said Mara conversationally to him through the screen door, 'not here.' Pilgrim was unmoved and began to rootle about in the planters, desisting only when tsked at severely by his late human pillow.

'I've never forgiven them,' said Mara unnecessarily, 'since Murtagh the harbour cat ate his way through one of da's catches of fish while he was trying to sell the excess.'

'Oh is that all,' said Faith, her voice rippling and warm with suppressed mirth. 'Well Pilgrim's evidently Murtagh's apologist. He only eats what we give him, Poppy will tell you.'

Mara made a noise that might have been agreement, but then equally might not have been.

It was with utter perplexity, therefore, that Poppy, arriving at the foot of the stairs one December morning, found Pilgrim comfortably installed by the fire, lapping at his chipped saucer while Mara stood over him, arms crossed. Poppy stood goggling at the pair of them, poised six stairs from the ground, and was so taken in by the spectacle that she missed out the stairs altogether, arriving at the bottom in a jumble of limbs, with a badly jarred ankle to show for it. Pilgrim spooked momentarily, but Mara only said easily, ' _lord what fools these mortals be_.'

Poppy grinned; only Mara could manage to say a thing with whimsy and continue to look severe while she said it.

'Your words or his?' asked Poppy, sitting abruptly down on the bottom stair and rubbing at her jarred ankle.

'Neither,' said Mara, still whimsical.

'I hadn't pinned you for a Puck, especially,' said Poppy, and grinned again. 'More Titania.' She meant it too, seeing Mara haloed in sunrise and honeyed by the glowing fire there was no denying that had the drama contingent's theatrical endeavours been elsewhere focused than _Twelfth Night_ that year, Mara would have made a remarkably good fairy-queen.

'Not nearly sensible enough,' said Mara, and with great purpose she sat down on the floor, took Pilgrim in hand and began to do what no one had yet succeeded at doing and eased the burrs out of his coat. Poppy continued to goggle at her. From anyone else the scene would have been the height of mundanity. Perhaps it was Mara's emersion in theatre, or the way the strengthening sunlight struck her ears and rendered them translucent, or perhaps just her murmured Gaelic to keep Pilgrim's nerves from rearing up, but bent over that cat, Mara looked more fey and elfin than ever. There was red in her hair, Poppy saw, or at any rate, it was shot through with copper, and she wore it well. How had they never noticed before? Di was forever railing against her hair, but Mara wore hers wound like a treble crown, daring the light to find the highlights in it. Seeing her like that, Poppy rather wondered at her having so far escaped the notice of the handful of young men still at the university. The house had its share of callers, of course, there were Faith's linguists and the twins fellow English readers, and a handful of Mara's theatre set and Poppy's mathematicians, to say nothing of the people Walter brought to their door, but somehow it was always Faith these people noticed, her goldenness and ebullience, or else Nan's keen insights and silkiness. Odd, Poppy thought now, watching Mara with Pilgrim, that they should all have overlooked Mara, when hers was a beauty that if not obvious, invited of a second look, that said _come closer_.

Compliments though, were not a thing that came to Poppy comfortably, neither the giving or receiving of them, and anyway, she had heard so much about the trials and torments of Mara's family at the hands of the harbour cat in Halifax that watching her placidly fussing over Pilgrim, Poppy couldn't help teasing her.

'I thought you had an everlasting grudge against cats,' said Poppy

Mara, deftly extracted a vicious-looking burr from behind what was left of Pilgrim's right ear. 'I have. I've made an exception for Pilgrim.'

Pilgrim either recognised this distinction for what it was, or else –and Poppy tended to think this more probable –supposed it was only his due, and began accordingly to purr and thrum with satisfaction.

'I see,' said Poppy dazedly, 'and he got into the house…?'

'It was keep him out or bring the weather in. There's a snowstorm brewing; I thought you'd probably prefer him to it.'

With Mara's head bent intently over the cat, Poppy dared to risk another grin. 'You won't ever admit to liking him, will you?' she said comfortably.

'Not for worlds,' said Mara.


	4. Chapter 4

_Thanks as ever for reading and/or reviewing._

* * *

It was Faith's idea that Swallowgate observe Christmas early, and idea Di loved her for as it served to brighten what might have been an otherwise dreich December. For one thing, the snow wouldn't stick. They got enough of it, but the cold never lasted and Swallowgate and the surrounding area was shortly wreathed in slush. Sometimes it crept under the door or Pilgrim climbed in through the attic window and trekked it through the house leaving damp patches behind him. When it finally did take cold it was the clear cold that precluded snow and turned the slush to ice, making the walk to the gate for the milk nothing so much as a demonstration of gymnastic prowess. That was how they discovered Swallowgate proved almost untenably cold. For all its warmth of character and its fairytale charm, the nooks and crevices that had won so many hearts in the autumn emerged that December as vacuums for heat. The firewood Poppy had taken pains to lay by in the autumn diminished at a rate of knots. It was as they were reassessing their stores of it, in fact, that Nan had launched into one of her 'economies' and set the affair of an early Christmas in motion. The English Lord Harrington had dressed a most impressive goose with all the trimmings for dinner, and furnished the house with an extravagantly illuminated Christmas tree. Then Nan tucked her knees under her chin and said, 'but you know girls, if I could have anything I liked just now –I'd give good money to keep Christmas here. I know it's a dreadful thing to say –and I do love Ingleside, I _do_ –but Swallowgate means _comfort_ now. When I'm here I don't feel the pinpricks of absences or the war so very much. Is that awful?'

'If it is,' said Faith, winding an arm around Nan's neck, 'then I'm awful along with you.'

A chorus of agreement rose up from the others. They all dreaded the holiday severance it transpired; the Ingleside twins and Faith because it would be their first Christmas with Jem and Jerry absent, Mara because she didn't trust the arrangements made with Next Door to look after Pilgrim over the holiday, Poppy because she was convinced well-intentioned family would diminish her to the person she had been prior to Swallowgate and Redmond immediately on her alighting from the boat. Also, she had a brother due to leave in the New Year and that was bound to cause wailing and gnashing of teeth.

'It's not,' said Poppy, 'that I won't miss him –Robbie's a good lad –it's just that I don't see how making a great to do over it will help anybody, him least of all.'

They fretted it out over cocoa, crouched close by the fire, until Di began to feel gloom settle in her bones. Faith must have felt it too, because she suddenly burst out, 'oh for goodness' sake, enough of this! We're quite old enough to keep our own counsel,' this said sounding defiant and looking radiant, 'and if we want to keep Christmas here, then we shall. We'll keep it the best we can and never mind about the war, or the fact that we're celebrating early. We've been up to our eyes in work all term; I suppose we can have a holiday. We'll pin our hopes on it, even,' and they all laughed, the walls of their little living room ringing with the sound of it. Poppy had clapped her hands in delight, Mara had smiled, Nan had looked quietly gratified, and Di felt the encroaching gloom leaven slightly.

That was how it came about that to stave off the heaviness of impending departure, the girls of Swallowgate went out of their way to beautify their home, the war measures act notwithstanding. Poppy and Faith spent a pleasant half-hour constructing paper-chains and ribbons to festoon the walls with, Poppy remarking, 'I don't believe I've done this since I was a girl!'

'I don't think Una and I did anything like this even then. Aunt Martha would have had a fit,' said Faith, but then she stuck a stray bow jauntily above her ear and they dissolved in peels of laughter.

Nan strung up popcorn strings and scattered candles among the pastel shepherdesses. Other times, Di went with her on tramps out into the woodsy places in search of greenery, arriving back at the house with armfuls of prickly holly, spiced cedar and balsam boughs and masses of ivy; an outcome which delighted Faith and Poppy but perplexed Mara.

'Don't worry,' said Di, catching her raised eyebrows, 'Nan and I looked –no fairy sprites to be seen, no glimmering lights and no signs pronouncing the woods Arden.'

Mara had folded her arms and looked majestic, at least until the corners of her mouth betrayed her and tugged upwards.

'Well that's all right then,' she had said, and vanished into the kitchen before Di could stake a claim on it, determined to make them restorative tea for their trouble.

On colder, blustery days, Di and Mara fought amicably for the kitchen. When no victor was declared, they worked alongside one another, Mara on shortbread, Di on gingersnaps. The fruitcake was a joint effort amongst all of them; they stood over the scrubbed pine table peeling and dicing and mixing things together for a cake worthy of Susan Baker.

By the time the first war Christmas came round the girls with pinned hopes –Walter's witticism had stuck –were famous for their hospitality. The door seemed to be perpetually on the latch as Walter and assorted classmates and fellow College Red Cross members braved the weather and filed in and out, brimful of burgeoning philosophies, pattern books and more prosaically, bolts of fabric and skeins of yarn. They gloried in these intrusions into their lives, only too glad of any ready excuse to leave off their private battles against academia and congregate in the living room to hold forth on the subject of the day. Needles flew as maps were unrolled and defence lines put forward, knitting needles clicked while so many thespians ran lines and fed each other cues. In the corner of the room presided over by Miss Lacey's harp, Poppy and her fellow mathematicians grappled equally with Euclid and heel-setting. They rolled bandages and theorised about the military significance of Artois, while simultaneously the Blythe twins and their literary contemporaries dissected the meaning of Wordsworth's _The Recluse_ and whether he ought or ought not have insisted that Coleridge be the one to write it _._ And all the while people tripped through the hallway as if it were a train-station, sitting on the floor when the squashy chairs were overburdened, leaning precariously against end tables at their own risk –to say nothing of that of the shepherdesses –bearing sometimes edibles, sometimes fabric, sometimes only themselves, and always they were welcomed gladly because such activity left Swallowgate pulsing with such purpose as caused Di to conclude a journal entry dated to mid-December, _we have ceased to be friends –we all feel it. Rather we have become family._

They traded gifts ton the eve of their departure over mugs of hot pressed cider that smelled strongly of cinnamon and cloves, and tasted of heaven. The girls drank it crouched close to the fire, Pilgrim weaving between them, a perambulating obsidian motor engine. From Mara, Nan had a set of wooden cutouts for biscuits that enchanted all of them, and led to exclamations of 'in what _time_ Mara –we didn't know you could carve –how long did they take –look at the detail of them!'

From Poppy came a lot of tatted lace collars and handkerchiefs for her friends, gifts well within their slender means though plumbing depths of investment and patience in the project the others could only wonder at.

'You must have worked them by moonlight!' Faith said, fingering her winged collar, 'I never caught you at them, ever.'

Nan had baked for them –Marilla Cuthbert's plum pudding –which led Poppy to open her eyes in astonishment and demand only half-seriously ' _how_ , and _when_ did you wrangle the kitchen?' to general laughter.

Di had been embroidering. One of the College Reds had dropped off a lot of unwanted muslin that was too ravelled and fine for war-work –to say nothing of the wrong colours –but which had been readily convertible into shawls that might in a pinch do for evenings out. No one else had been able to think what to do with it. There had been a creamy gold coloured swatch –too small to constitute a bolt –that Di had halved into triangles and done up, one for Faith and another for Nan, covered over in redwork that once dawned turned them into dryads worthy of golden birch trees. Mara and Poppy had from her navy shawls covered in whitework that made Mara wonder, 'but your hands –you need impossibly clean hands for whitework.'

They were famous for their hospitality. Few people alive –or so Walter ever said of them –were as gracious, as captivating, as openly generous and as it might happen more barbed than the girls who pinned hopes.

This went some way to explaining why Walter Blythe thought nothing of descending upon this gentle chaos of scattered paper, ribbons and festivity with a hearty cry of 'visitors for you!'

Di said with something between exasperation and affection, 'you might have warned us!'

'What, spoiled our fun?' They were spilling into the room by then, Walter and the visitor he had brought, with no mind at all for the girls' frenetic efforts to collect the papers and ribbons, and all those trappings of presents together and reassert tidiness.

'We were heading back from an evening's entertainment courtesy of _Perennial_ ,' said Walter unconcernedly, sitting down on the floor, stretching out his legs and unwittingly sending a china shepherdess toppling to the floor, where her parasol dissolved into pastel splinters.

'The people at that mag take themselves entirely to seriously by turns, and we thought a look in on you lot would be the perfect antidote.'

'Well,' said the khaki-clad young man at Walter's elbow, as he swept up the remnants of the shepherdess, ' _Blythe_ thought it the perfect antidote. I thought it would probably be an unsolicited intrusion on your evening. I'm sorry on his behalf about the china.' He held up a piece of parasol and smiled sheepishly. He had the look of someone, who for reasons of good grace was making a concerted effort not to say _I told you so_. Di was rather hoping he would, and evidently so were the other girls; she could see they were in fact exchanging looks that equated to bets as to when he would capitulate and do exactly that, even as they waved away his apology.

'Miss Lacey's a forgiving sort,' said Di for all of them, 'and we've never been much taken with those shepherdesses anyway. The odds were in favour of there being a casualty or two among them.'

'I'm still sorry about it, if Blythe isn't. I grew up in a place crammed with knick-knacks, gifts most of them that we couldn't get rid of for fear of offence; I know what it's like to live with them. You don't always _like_ them, but they sort of take root in your soul and you feel the loss if they break.'

Di smiled, but Walter took no notice except to elbowed Faith in the knees, obliging her to scoot farther up her window seat that he might share it for the preservation of the remaining china shepherdesses.

'We've had nothing but literary theory all evening,' he said as he folded long limbs into one of the window seat's corners, 'and when it hasn't been that it's been politics; everyone wants to know the outcome of Givenchy and how England's recovering from shells.' He grimaced, as if the articulation of such things had left a bad taste in his mouth.

'Have we at least earned a light touch of tea and biscuits?'

'If that's what you were after, I could have rustled something like it up for you back at camp,' said the other boy airily. ' _And_ I offered to do it. You don't need to trouble about that,' this last disarmingly to his assembled hosts. Then, rucking up on his heels, having swept the china fragments into a neat pile, 'Blythe, you are going to introduce me to these good people, are you?'

Walter ran a hand through his hair, so that it was left if possible more ruffled than it had been to start with. 'The twins you know,' he said unhelpfully.

Di was on the verge of opening her mouth to ask if this was indeed the case when her brother pressed on. 'At least in theory; Di was rather good at snakebites.'

In demonstration of this fact, Di administered a sharp pinch to her brother's ear, making him squeal.

'Giving them, lest you were curious. What was that for?'

' _We_ don't remember, if you do,' Di said, sitting down at his feet.

It was at this junction that their company was further augmented by a pixie with fair hair cropped to frame her face, and wide brown eyes, who carried herself like a diminutive queen. Di was still rummaging through memories in an effort to place the khaki youth, but the pixie appeared to do the trick for her twin and Nan's memory, which was long as an elephant's in spots –or so said Blythe mythology –came into sharp focus.

'Ruthie Blake!' she said, springing up from her patch of floor and running towards the pixie as if she was an old friend, sending whirls of ribbon cascading from lap to floor as she did so. She caught the other girl up in her arms, and then said absent-mindedly over her shoulder to their unnamed company, 'That will make you Andrew. You'll have to forgive our not knowing you but –and here to say something original –you've grown rather since we met last.'

'Mama tried to stop him,' said Ruthie helpfully if faintly into Nan's shoulder. Nan let her go at once, and the other girl made a show of pressing a hand to her heart and gasping for air. Then she floated into the room and settled herself at her brother's feet, and the likeness between them became startling. Certainly he wasn't so elfin as his sister, his ears stuck out more, but he shared her light hair and pointed chin. If his eyes weren't so striking as hers they certainly had the same latent spark of perpetual interest as Ruthie's.

Faith, Di saw with amusement, was eyeing the door to the living room curiously, the better to catch any guests still lurking in the hall.

'I take it this is all our impromptu company?' asked Faith of Walter.

'Oh yes,' said that dreamer, waving a hand airily.

Mara went to shift Pilgrim from her lap the better to make tea, and got as far as the kitchen door before Di intervened.

'My turn,' she said, giving Mara a playful push. 'IT's only fair, as you made the cider.'

Ignoring this, Mara tried to duck past Di into the kitchen, and came up against Di's folded arms, and a swish of red hair as Di turned her head to glance pointedly at Pilgrim, who was keening the song of a neglected cat at the foot of Mara's chair.

Over by the window seat a half-risen Ruthie whispered to Faith, 'I was going to offer to help, but do I gather that would be bad policy?'

'Depends on the kind of stock you set on your survival,' said Faith conspiratorially. 'All semester's been like this. Ypres couldn't equal it.'

Di heard her, and so evidently did Mara. By the kitchen door they traded looks, laughed, together retreated towards the fire, saw simultaneously the other hadn't gone for the tea, and rose again. Pilgrim, thus displaced twice let out a yowl of indignation, and Mara retreated, waving Di off with a smile and an air of token resignation as she ministered to the offended cat.

When Di resurfaced it was to find the others trading histories; the Blakes of their ministerial upbringing on Patterson street –embellished by Andrew's account of the knick-knacks they had had to preserve for the sake of their father's stipend, all while brandishing a shard of shepherdess in Walter's general direction – Poppy of the bustling, chattery farm life out west that she had shelved for the sake of grappling with such complexities as calculus derivatives and vectors, and Mara of her Halifax roots.

'…near the harbour,' she was saying when Di re-emerged, 'a Bluenose throughly. I was mending nets when the news came, if there was ever any doubt.'

This was met with general laughter, and then Andrew Blake, turning to the collection of Blythes and Merediths pitched what seemed to be the perpetual question, 'what about you? What were you doing when war broke out?'

Nan and Faith had lapsed into dreaming, impenetrable castles in the air that no amount of social nicety would breech. Beside her, Di could feel Walter bristle as his salvaged patch of conscience betrayed alarming fault-lines. She thought hard about shaking him, telling him it was the question on everyone's lips and not a swipe at his presence at the university, then recollected their company, and spared a thought for Poppy's nerves, softened, and settled for answering the Blakes.

'We were up at the Harbour light. There was a dance on, little Rilla's first. Jack Elliot ran up with the news and so wrought general havoc. Jem was all for running up the flag, Jerry too –and you were too, weren't you Faith?'

Catching the sound of her name, Faith nodded, and obligingly took up the narrative, to Di's relief. Andrew Blake, comfortably ensconced on the floor, head tilted casually to one side, had an unnerving ability to impress upon a speaker the sense he had time enough and world enough for the story being told him. She had caught a glimpse of it earlier, as Poppy and Mara talked, but it was something else to feel it directed at her; Di couldn't make up her mind if she liked or was afraid of it. Besides, if Faith narrated for a bit it made it easier to gloss over the part where Walter had prophesied doom, blood and gnashing of teeth for all and sundry and their falling out over it. It didn't bear dwelling on anyway, not least, Di told herself because that was all forgot now; Walter had said as much when news came of the Marne victory all those months ago. They had mostly managed since to paper over the fractures created by the rift and go on if not as before then stronger for the mending, or that was the theory.

'Jem was all for going at once,' Faith was saying, when Di came back to the present, 'Jerry too.'

'Ruthie and Mama will have to do without me too,' Andrew said, 'from New Year. Sam and Jake went together, and I'd have gone too, only I wasn't quite old enough. That's the worst of having a late birthday –you miss out on so many things. Never mind –there's time to catch them up, I expect, if the war goes on as long as people are prophesying. But you'll know all about that,' he said, transferring that undivided attention to Walter, 'on account of having escaped that bout of typhoid mama said you'd had.'

Di felt more than saw Walter flinch, the twitch of his shoulder jarring her arm as she stooped to pour out the tea. The collision sent a spurt of tea across the table, spackling it with golden droplets.

'Music,' said Mara, to Di's relief, apparently sensing the rift. 'Play a little for us, Poppy, will you?'

'Oh I couldn't possibly!' squealed Poppy, more pink-cheeked and poppy-like than ever in the firelight. 'I'm not nearly good enough for company.'

'We aren't company,' dimpled Ruth genially, and Di thought she probably wasn't. Andrew might be going abroad in a matter of weeks, but Di had the strong sense that Ruthie would be something of a fixture at Swallowgate when that inevitable thing came to pass.

'Anyway,' said Mara, 'that's nonsense. Mouse plays like an angel –I've heard her.'

'That's not at all the same,' said Poppy, wringing her hands vigourously. Di was vaguely aware of an undercurrent of surprise rippling through their set; _they_ had never heard Poppy play, not so much as a glissando.

Disregarding Poppy's uncertainty, Di seized upon this revelation to appeal to Poppy's sense of fairness. Nan, sensing her train of thought, joined in, reasoning and cajoling in that winsome way that had won her so many friends at the Glen school when they were girls. Faith coaxed, and pleaded and the end result was that Poppy relented with the look of a martyr, and retreated to the shelter offered by Miss Lacey's harp.

If she wasn't a semi-professional musician, she was sure enough of what she did to please her listeners. Besides, none of them had expected unplumbed depths of proficiency; they had wanted only the cosy charm of a carol-sing and Poppy, once she forgot her nerves, was happy to offer them that. They sang _Dancing Day_ , and _Holly and the Ivy_ , even _Bring a Torch_ , which Faith attempted in French to the supreme delight of the others and mangled only slightly. It was the perfect cap to the term, and the girls who pinned hopes went away with a good taste of Christmas in their mouths.


	5. Chapter 5

_With thanks ever for your reading and/or reviewing._

* * *

Mara was waiting for the others when they arrived back after the holiday, a fire glowing in the grate and bread in the oven. It wasn't Poppy's grade, but it would do until Poppy had caught her breath from travelling. She heard them long before they appeared, Nan's bell-song of a laugh, Faith's blithe, spirited chatter, Walter's sombre tread, no doubt weighed down at least a _little_ by the girls' cases, all of them misted with melted snow and pink with chill.

'Oh it's good to be back,' said Faith in declamatory fashion, emerging from the hallway like a well-intentioned hurricane and hurtling herself into the window seat, arms and legs akimbo.

'Such a Christmas as we've had, Lodz and Champagne –oh and Miss Oliver. I know you Blythes like her, but can she be gloomy!'

'It was a pretty glum Christmas in its own right,' said Walter.

Before an atmosphere had had time to settle over their return, Faith said apropos of nothing, 'girls, am I going mad or is the end table nearest the hall door less the green-and-rose shepherdess? Not that I miss her,' with a mirthful toss of her golden head, 'but I've pictured myself back here so often over the break that I thought I knew every inch of this place and now I'm second-guessing myself.'

'No, you're right, it is,' Mara said, her voice heavy with suppressed laughter –Faith's whimsy was contagious – 'it's not only me that's glad to have you back.'

'That was you was it,' said Poppy affably to Pilgrim as she scratched the more substantial of his ears. ' Knocked it over before deciding not to greet us after all, did you? You must have been a blur of activity, Mara, to tidy it away before we'd come in.'

Mara shrugged and reached for a ball of wool out of the basket by the fire and took up her knitting.

'Already?' said Walter, 'don't you girls who pin hopes ever let up?'

'No,' said Di, unpacking her own knitting and joining Mara, 'the war hasn't, so neither do we.'

February was a terse month; Jem and Jerry went to the front and the fact that Jem at least had written home mentioning the mud, the mire and cooties didn't help, even if, as his mother speculated in a letter to Nan… _he only did it for the value of shocking Susan, who, poor soul, on discovering the nature of cooties, went off to add a tooth-comb to her latest parcel and I strongly suspect, draft a letter to the government of Canada about the conditions it is subjecting its soldiers to._

Poppy had three brothers at the Somme, Mara four, and Di had acquired the weird lighted-up look of Nan and Faith for no discernable reason that Mara could work out. Not that there had been much time to analyse anyone's psyche; the term had resumed in a dizzying swirl of activity that sent Mara into the unreadable depths of Mary Pix's _The Innocent Mistress_ for the purposes of an essay she had no wish to write and whose one dubious merit was the success with which it redirected both her ire against the German lines and the distraction it occasioned in the face of demoralising reports from the front. The others too, were embroiled in private battles against the university; Faith with the nuances of strong and weak Italian verbs, Nan on Thackeray and Di on the moralising tendencies of Charles Kingsley. These saved them walking as on hot coals around each other, an arrangement that they had long since discovered untenable.

And when –inevitably –they had no stomach left for theorising and arguing points in sophisticated language they threw themselves wholeheartedly in to a wild eddy of activity punctuated by letters and fussy things called taped bed jackets that the girls who pinned hopes sewed stubbornly and used to count the months. They pinned them among the end tables and the shepherdesses, the cherry blossom china elbow-reach away and letters –the ones they'd received –to hand. Though once or twice Mara had looked up and caught Faith trying to write and pin, staining her cotton with ink, and pricking her paper with pins in the process.

'Una's asking for the pronunciation of Ypres now,' said Faith one afternoon. 'Apparently her nerves can't take Susan and Cousin Sophia mangling it once more.'

'Oh gracious, if even Una's running out of patience –by the by, how _do_ we say it?' asked Nan good-naturedly. Faith's eyes flashed gold and she declined to answer, which pause Nan deftly filled with a report of the Ingleside news.

'Spider's finally fallen out with Irene Howard. It was contaminating wee Jims with kisses that did it. Her soul is harrowed, Jims's caught a cold and Rilla is _sure_ –treble underline –that it's Irene's fault. Olive Kirk is in high dudgeon – that gets a double underline – because of it, and Irene won't come to the Junior Reds anymore and –bless Spider –she's sorry for –here a single underline only –the death of the friendship. I wouldn't be 15 again for anything –would you?'

There was a collective shudder as consensus was reached that they would _not_ , not even if it meant a return to time unravaged by war.

'Anyone would think it was a military plan destined to win the war,' said Mara conversationally to Poppy one evening of the baffling closeness that Di preserved in the affair of her commentary on _The Water Babies_. They were both indulging in a much-needed break from academe, Poppy having appeared by her own admission out of concern for the preservation of Mara's sanity after the nth thunk of _Restoration Dramas_ against the tower room's far wall, which place it had struck by virtue of Mara's throwing it thence. Faced with the sight of Poppy and a tea tray Mara had whirled away from deficient dramas, and seized simultaneously the chance to chat with another human and probe at more everyday dramatics.

'It's that or she's writing letters,' said Poppy.

'Ones we can't know about? Who to? I thought it was Nan that was close to Jem.'

'It is,' said Nan appearing on the heels of Poppy, a mug of tea in her hands. 'Di is –usually –closer to Walter. Of the two of them I mean.'

The implication being that she was closer still to Nan, though Nan both looked and sounded doubtful on this point. She sat down on the floor and smoothed out Mara's much-abused _Restoration Dramas_.

'Well what about…'Poppy's frowned and set the tea tray down on the night table, the better to flap her hands in frustration. 'You remember,' she said, appealing to Mara, 'that friend of Walter's that turned up over Christmas –our Christmas naturally.'

Mara closed her eyes in an effort to summon the face of the person in question, and drew a blank. Her brain could fixate on nothing but the deficiencies of Mary Pix's writing, and little wonder; she had lost the evening to mining it for quotes that could be fitted into an essay. She pushed them away and found that she could more easily remember Ruthie, though that no doubt owed to the frequency with which she was seen at Swallowgate, both on and off Walter's arm. That warranted a good talking-over too, but not now. Presently she was trying to summon the image of Ruthie's brother, whose outline she had mentally sketched insofar as his having been a nondescript entity, easily overlooked in so much bustle, and there had certainly been that that last evening. Nan, Mara was gratified to see, seemed equally doubtful. Her eyebrows shot upward in elegant testimony to her surprise.

'Andrew Blake? We hadn't seen him in years before Walter brought him here that evening.'

Poppy shrugged. 'Does it make so much difference?'

'Well don't look to me,' said Mara laughing, and tossing a cushion Poppy's way, 'I only _act_ women in love, and not even that at the moment.'

Poppy caught the cushion and laughed heartily. 'How's Feste coming together anyway? You must be going to performance soon.'

'The end of term. I've missed you for accompanist.'

Poppy disregarded this compliment in favour of deflecting attention back at Mara. 'You must say when it's on. We'll have to come see.'

'Yes,' said Nan from the floor. 'Which reminds me, I've had a letter from mother you'll appreciate, after all your railing against this book and its contents.' She gave _Restoration Dramas_ a conciliatory pat, and extracted a letter from the pocket of her blouse, which she skimmed a moment, then finding her place, read aloud.

 _You absolutely must convey my utmost sympathy to Mara in the affair of_ _The Innocent Mistress_ _. Also my apologies, as I did once, in another epoch of my life, along with Priss, Stella and Phil, campaign to have that unholy attempt at literature taken off the syllabus. We wrangled it in English –which is why, daughter mine, you have been saved the misery of reading it –but couldn't sway the theatre department, who felt they were being_ _most_ _forward in their representation of women writers! The look on Stella's face when she told them that if that was their intention they might have picked_ _good_ _women writers –Nan darling, I haven't words!_

 _The thing of it was, it_ _was_ _excruciatingly bad, as anyone with any brains could see. Phil wasn't an Arts major and_ _she_ _could see it. She had, in fact actually read the silly thing voluntarily as all our pulling it to pieces over the dinner table was leaving her out, or so she said. Afterwards she blamed us for introducing her to Mary Pix._

 _Stella, naturally, having failed to save fellow dramatists from unreadable –not to say unperformable –theatre for the foreseeable future went on to rectify the predicament as best she could by landing herself a position at a university out in BC that now has an exemplary drama curriculum. In light of which, I am strongly tempted to write to her suggesting she write a Strongly Worded Letter to People Who Matter at Redmond extolling the virtues of updating the syllabus once every 20 years or so. Not to worry, your mother promises faithfully to do no such thing if you reply at once saying it would be too mortifying a circumstance to contemplate. It won't give Mara back the hours of her life she has lost in the reading of the idiotic thing, but it would give me –and certainly Stella –a good bit of fun_.

Here Nan was obliged to break off, overwhelmed by the laughter of the other girls, which was catching.

'I told you,' said Mara, gratified. 'I _told_ you,' in a rare burst of italics, 'that you could open that dratted book at random and be guaranteed better reading than Pix's attempt at a play, that every other one of its contents was superior.'

'You didn't leave much room for doubt,' said Poppy, picking up the cushion from earlier and lobbing it gently back at Mara. 'What I can't work out is why you have to read it at all. I thought it was _Twelfth Night_ this term?'

'The practical part of the course,' said Mara, nodding. 'For the rest we have to read all manner of stuff –but usually it's readable and I don't have to write an essay on it!'

'I suppose we ought to let you get on,' said Nan, rising reluctantly.

'Yes, I really ought to do something about those complex derivatives,' said Poppy, 'they won't solve themselves, alas, alack.'

'I ought to get back to Thackeray. I almost envy Di that moralistic fairytale of hers, at least its _manageable_.'

Mara, who had no desire to return to analysis of _The Innocent Mistress_ –though she accepted the book back from Nan when offered it –caught Nan's hand and said playfully, 'leave _Vanity Fair_ alone for a bit and read the rest of the letter. It's bound to be more interesting, and I guarantee it's better written.'

That was how they learned that they were to add 'Kaiserised' –the latest Susanism –to the dictionary, that Jims was cutting a tooth, and that Rilla's upcoming concert for the Belgian orphans was –another Susanism –'all catawumpus.'

 _It's turning your father's hair greyer by the day_ , wrote Anne Blythe on this topic. _As Gertrude and I understand it, Miranda Pryor cannot play the part she was to have, because Whiskers-on-the-Moon objects, Mrs. M. Channing has agreed to sing, leaving Minnie Clow so nervous that_ _she_ _refuses to, thus depriving the choir of altos, and Rilla is worrying herself into a crisis over whether or not the Isaac Reeses have whooping cough. They haven't, according to your father, but Rilla's in too much of a whirlwind to pay attention to anything so reasonable as a doctor's diagnosis._

It wasn't only Rilla in a whirlwind. Great was the day that saw the submission of so many essays, leaving Nan unshackled from _Vanity Fair_ , Mara blessedly free of Mary Pix and _The Innocent Mistress_ , and Di still writing _something_ , though not, Poppy and Mara concluded one morning, on Kingsley's _Water Babies_ , if for no better reason than Nan having vouched for her having submitted the essay.

They celebrated by taking the taped bed jackets out into the garden, where the sycamores were in leaf and daffodils abundant. The wind puffed the cotton like swollen sails, rattled their sewing boxes, and snatched at pin-books and spools of thread, but Mara didn't care. After months indoors, slaving over unreadable dramas, it was bliss to sit on the grass and watch the clouds, the news of St Julien and Gallipoli notwithstanding. She certainly didn't envy Faith, ensconced in the window seat and grappling with stem changes in preparation for an Italian sight-translation the following afternoon. Best of all, she had successfully seized control of the kitchen, rota regardless, on the strength of her being nearer the back door and less burdened with flyaway fabric and impedimenta than Di. Mara was pouring out tea and Nan spinning up the latest of Lord Harrington's adventures –this one was a murder mystery worthy of Sherlock –while Poppy and Di sewed companionably when Walter appeared from nowhere.

'You lot look like you've been grown here,' he said. Mara registered his shadow –taut and dark –spilling across their patch of lawn before she saw him, looming grey and severe, feet above them.

'Like a lot of dryads of the sycamore tree,' he said. This won him a smile from Di so bright that Mara promptly forgave him the offence of looming and then wondered when they had got to know each other well enough to have forged such loyalties in the first place.

'Nan's been telling us another of her economies,' said Di.

'Fancies, more nearly,' said Poppy with the authority of one who knew all about economies when she saw them. Finally, belatedly, Walter settled himself on a sycamore stump and stretched his legs out before him.

'What about? Would I like it?'

'Poppy's keen on it anyway,' said Nan, rolling her shoulders to remove the kinks from them. 'It's all about Lord Harrington going overseas –topicality you know –and finding a man who's been killed by…'Nan stopped abruptly, on the sight of Walter's face.

'I _can't_ go, don't you see?' said Walter.

'Then don't,' said Di, more shortly than she had intended, threading an arm around her sister's shoulder and pulling her close. Mara thought it probably didn't help that Di's needle was sticking in the French seam she was stitching. Gently she leaned across their circle and extricated the taped bed jacket from Di and set to work on it, leaving her free to fuss over Nan.

'No one's asked you to.'

'I begin to think I must,' said Walter greyly. ''Even Andrew Blake has gone now. That leaves Carl, and you can be sure he'll hare off as soon as his birthday's been and gone.' He made this sound like such a crime that none of them was sure what angered him more, his own reticence or the other boys' sense of purpose. Whichever it was, Mara was overwhelmed with a burst of gladness for Faith's absence. Not one to worry herself into illness, she had been taut as a sail since discovering that October heralded her baby brother's eighteenth birthday.

There was a breezeless rustling of leaves that proved on inspection to be Poppy trying noiselessly to pack the tea things back onto their tray and stage a retreat. Mara helped her absently, half an eye on the sewing in her lap, the other on Di, who had gone the colour of blue milk. Mara made an effort to catch Nan's eye for verification that a storm was rising, but Nan's eyes were squeezed shut and anyway, she didn't need the telling, not really.

'Have I shown you my latest letter?' Walter was saying when Mara next became aware of the conversation. She didn't like the way he said it, and she didn't like the way Di was waxing whiter by the second. She didn't particularly want to be listening either –was sure she had no right to be–but wanted even less to leave Di to bear the onslaught alone. That there was going to be an onslaught was now incontestable; the air was heavy with the swelling tension of it. Nan had cottoned on to Poppy's retreat tactic and as proof of alliance was accordingly packing up their sewing boxes.

''It doesn't matter who wrote it.' That was Walter again. 'It's not receiving it that bothers me so, do you know what does? While I haven't written a thing –a non-academic thing I mean –in months,' said Walter with sudden viciousness, 'someone has been able to write invective of the highest order and shove it under my nose. All the poetry's gone out of me –out of the world –but ugliness like that can run riot. And this…It's all true, which is worse still.'

Di tied off a row of stitches with precision that belied the largeness of her hands and said, 'Walter if you feel you must then of course you'll go. I don't mean it wouldn't be hard, only that Jem going was bad but we bore that. Jerry too. We're getting remarkably good at bearing things, this last year. It'll be the pinning hopes this last term that's helped, I shouldn't wonder.' Di smiled at him but Walter registered this fact no more than he had done her attempt at levity.

'But I _don't_ want to go –I can't. I've been trying to tell you.'

'Then don't. Look,' said Di, 'I don't like it either. I want the whole damnable thing to stop, all right? But I can't make it stop, and I can't go for a soldier, so I'm doing the one thing I _can_ do to hurry it along, do you see?'

'It's all right for you; you've the Red Cross work. There isn't –'

Mara fled on the heels of the others, trailing half-sewn taped bed jackets over one arm, dimly aware of the quarrel unravelling behind her.

'There _is_ ,' said Di fiercely. 'It mightn't be fighting, but do something else. Put out fires. Mend bones. Write poetry for God's sake to put a bit of gladness back into the world. I don't mind what you do, Walter, none of us does, only do _something_.'

'I didn't realise you felt that way about it,' he said stiffly and got up from his mossy stump and walked with purpose out of the garden.

'I shouldn't have said that,' said Di to the sycamores, left alone in the wake of his going.

'Yes you should,' said a quiet, fierce voice in her ear.

'I shouldn't have, but it's sweet of you to say so,' said Di.

'You really are upset,' said Faith, giving Di's shoulder a squeeze, 'to have mistaken me for Una. _She's_ sweet. I'm caustic. I also happen to think you were right to say it, and I don't just mean because I've got a brother and beau abroad.'

'Have you then?' asked Di, more out of interest than real surprise.

'I hadn't meant to say,' said Faith, a little guiltily. It was Di's turn to squeeze her friend's shoulder and smile.

'I won't say.'

'I shouldn't think you would. You've not said a word yourself.' Gently she extracted a tattered bit of paper from among Di's sewing things, covered over in a free, sprawling hand.

'I know Jem's writing,' said Faith unabashedly, 'and that's not it. I don't put much stock in that theory Nan's been reading up on circa her Victorian writers, about character being discernable in handwriting, if I'd been asked to guess what Andrew Blake's writing looked like, I guess I'd have settled on something of this ilk.'

'It was Ruthie's idea,' said Di by way of answer, 'my writing. She could never decide on what news to say and what to keep back. She thought I'd have better luck. I never gave a thought for it turning into anything more, and then I was in the middle of it with no way of getting back and I –'

'Didn't want to jeopardize anything by saying it aloud? Neither did I. What I meant to say, before we were distracted with talk of love, was that you were right to say what you did. I didn't mean to overhear –I wasn't listening –but I was sitting on the window seat wrestling with strong verbs –you should see them, they're a right tangle –and I couldn't help hearing, at least at first. Then Mara came in with the look of a blancmange about her –she wears pallor worse even than you –and I thought I'd slip out and see what had happened. You don't usually quarrel, you and Walter.'

'We never used to at all.'

'There's a lot of things we never used to do,' said Faith sympathetically. ' _I_ never used to read the newspaper, and that's just to start with. We do it all anyway though. We don't always like it, but it's better than doing nothing. Maybe it's a hard truth to learn, and maybe sometimes it's hurt like the dickens accepting it, but we've all done it anyway. You want Walter to know it too, not because it hurts –though it does –but because knowing –and understanding –helps.'

'You're a gem,' said Di affectionately, with a tug at one of Faith's myriad stray and taffy-coloured curls.

'Now you really are confusing me with Una,' said Faith. She stood, laughing and extended an arm to help pull Di to her feet. Di was inclined to disagree; Una would have cosseted her, she thought, and she wasn't in the mood for that at all. Faith's funny, blunt way was just the thing, all Faith's deprecation to the contrary. Truth might hurt, but it tended to be the best prescription against wallowing that Di had come across. That and tea. Faith was making some now, having dragged Di bodily back into the house. Di leaned against the counter, content for once to cede control of the kitchen while Faith haphazardly concocted a brew of what looked to be Assam, made with a generous helping of leaves, to judge from the mass at the bottom of the cherry-blossom teapot.

Mara would find the aftermath, the tannined teacups and the used teapot, and would rinse them wordlessly and without censure, because in a world where verb stems and moralistic Victorian fairytales –even unreadable plays –were the least of their worries it seemed a small price to pay for the restoration of order. Even if that order was snatched and lasted no longer than the contents of the teapot.


	6. Chapter 6

_With thanks always for reading and/or reviewing and apologies for being away._

* * *

 _Swallowgate,_

 _Kingsport,_

 _May 1915_

 _Dear mums,_

 _Twelfth Night_ _has made a welcome diversion, not only because of Di and Walter's row_ _ **,**_ _but from worrying over exam results. I have finally emerged from post-exam amnesia only to fall into outcome anticipation anxiety. It was a first-rate performance, which well and truly vindicated Poppy, who had said it would be. Mara, naturally, dreaded it for all the usual reasons and said right up until the eleventh hour that it would never come together. I think she was glad to have us there though, as she didn't try very hard to dissuade us, and having watched her battle Di for the kitchen this last year, I can vouch for the determination with which Mara attacks a point when she means to carry it._

 _All she said though, as a last appeal was 'don't expect perfection,' as we sat drinking tea and munching toast over breakfast the day of it's first performance._

 _'Nonsense,' said Poppy eagerly, 'it will be marvellous. Anyway, it's_ _you_ _we want to see, and you're going to be excellent. I've heard all your part before, remember.'_

 _This is true, somehow in addition to providing Mara with the odd bit of musical accompaniment to learn Feste's songs of an evening, it's worked out that these last few months she's spent her early mornings feeding Mara cues while waiting for her bread to bake. She's so sharp about it that we've begun to tease Poppy about knowing the play almost as well as Mara in spots._

 _We made an occasion of going out –you don't think that_ _very_ _extravagant, do you mums? We've had so few excuses to dress up this term that we couldn't help jumping at this one. Faith said it was our duty to, seeing as it was a way of showing support, and it was fun to make-believe we were going out to an evening at a professional theatre and not only to a redressed convocation hall. Besides, none of us bought anything new. Faith wore that russet crepe of hers that makes her look like a bronze sun, I got another evening out of my rose georgette, and Di wore that creamy muslin of hers that always puts me in mind of Henry Tilney –probably because of that line of Mrs. Allan's, 'you know muslin, sir? –as it's finally the weather for it again. Poppy protested at first that she had nothing really 'good,' for going out in, but that's only because Poppy doesn't look at clothes with a mind to their being ornamental. It took Faith and I five minutes to find and settle on a grey poplin of hers that makes her bewitching as any moth by candlelight. It was_ _fun_ _mums, the most fun we've had in ages, to dress up again, even if it is only for one another. Fixing each other's hair, and buttoning gloves left us all light as air. We were giddy with it as we stepped out of Swallowgate for the hall. The first star was winking palely against the fading sunlight, and seeing it, Faith tugged at my elbow and said, 'look, pin it to my hair, can you?'_

 _'You look like the light of the world already,' Di told her, 'any more and you'll make the moon envious.'_

 _At this point, Poppy said that if Di was going to quote Shakespeare, she might in the first instance quote it properly, in the second find something relevant, as it was a comedy we were going to see, and nothing like so demoralising as_ _Romeo and Juliet_ _, for which my everlasting gratitude to the Redmond dramatists. It was so like the sort of thing Mara might have said, had she not been waiting in the wings somewhere for the curtain to come up, that we all laughed and said we'd never have guessed Poppy knew so much about theatre._

 _'Oh but I don't,' said Poppy. 'It's catching though –all those evenings haunting the tower room and saving Mara from unreadable writers.'_

 _That made us laugh still harder, and we had to stop to get our breath back. For a moment I shut my eyes and thought if I swapped the sycamores for our lombardies, it could be Ingleside, and we could be setting out to one of our Island revels._

 _There are pictures somewhere, I think. Di brought Jem's camera back from Ingleside at Christmas and has been learning to use it. Accordingly she was gleefully snapping photos of us before we set out. She caught Faith magnificently coiled on the window seat looking like a meteor and Poppy wearing –yes really! –Pilgrim like a mantle. He took a fancy to that grey poplin, the same as Faith and I, and draped himself 'round her shoulders like a most magnificent stole in claws and whiskery cat. He'd have gone with us, I think, if Poppy hadn't detached him bodily at the door and deposited him unceremoniously in the hall. He was cross with her for it later, and it was all Mara could do to make the injustice up to him._

 _In the event, Mara seemed glad to see us; I caught her looking, anyway, whether she saw us from so far away staring into so much black, I shouldn't like to say. We had run across Ruthie and Walter at the door, and were all of us together though, so at least if she found one of us, she'd find the whole set. You'll be glad, I know, to hear that Walter was much softer than he has been since that spat with Di. He hasn't come near Swallowgate without Ruthie since, but you wouldn't have known it the other evening._

 _The play was a decided success, carrying us all away to Illyria and blissful forgetfulness for the duration and afterwards Poppy was triumphant, declaring herself vindicated to anyone who would listen. I wouldn't have believed she could crow, except that I've since heard her. When Mara emerged from the wings, Poppy flew at her, engulfed her in a bear hug and said jubilantly, 'I told you so, I told you so_ _, I told you so!_ _'_

 _Anyone who didn't know better would have supposed it was Poppy's success and not the other way around, she was that pleased. Mara was too relieved even to protest the chaos, she laughed, a wonderfully rich, warm amber sound._

 _Then Walter came up beside them, touched Mara's elbow and said, 'merriment suits you.'_

 _I think that was his way of apologising for their last meeting, though why he should –well it's easier to apologise to Mara, I think, than Di, who he never used to fall out with. And Mara_ _was_ _there for nearly all of that particular disagreement. Anyway, Mara took it for apology and softened herself. She's been all sharp edges around Walter since, out of loyalty to Di. Apparently she can go to war with Di over the kitchen, but no one else may say a word against her –and in that I confess to being on Mara's side._

 _'I'm glad,' said Walter, who was still possessed of Mara's elbow, 'that the school's made the decision to do away wit the tragedies until this war is over. We need laughter now and again.'_

 _We all felt it, I think, because by unspoken agreement we caught every performance in the run, well us Swallowgate girls did. And yes, because I can hear you asking, we made ourselves elegant for each outing. Sometimes in the name of variety we swapped dresses. Di and Poppy are built similarly enough to wear one another's things, as are Faith and I._

 _The last performance was yesterday evening. We asked Mara what she wanted to do, now she was free, and she said promptly, 'I want to hand the kitchen over to Di and sleep for a week, may I?'_

 _We laughed over that almost as much as we had over the play. Naturally we wouldn't let her –it was a triumph that needed celebrating. To that end we made a holiday of today, and played truant to our Red Cross work. We went instead on an expedition_ _to the park, picnicking some distance from the Martello tower._ _Faith entertained us with laughy epistles from Jem –glossed, no doubt of sentences not intended for communal reading –while competing with Di at a game of Othello. I was indulging in the luxury of reading for leisure; your copy of_ _The Custom of the Country_ _arrived, and I'd been saving it on purpose. Poppy poured out tea from a flask and handed round a batch of my monkey-face biscuits. The verdict on those, incidentally was that they're as good as Susan's, in light of which, I am resolved to master her cream puff recipe over the summer, if it can be done. They can't be so different from Marilla's plum puffs, and I can do those to perfection._

 _Mara lay flat on her stomach by the creek, one hand submerged in the water, fingers rippling like submerged minnows, paying not a jot of notice to our teasing, and caught over the course of the afternoon a string of trout for us that proved more than sufficient for a suitably celebratory supper. When Faith saw that she said Mara must share the trick of how she'd done it, not because Faith thought she'd be much good, you know, only that she thought Jem would be interested, and I expect she's right._

 _We ate the fish sitting out under the sycamores, balancing plates precariously on our knees. It was the first time since October that the weather had been both dry and warm enough to make such a thing possible –spring this year having been both ridiculously verdant but also appallingly damp. It was still too early for crickets, but Pilgrim rustled in the long grass of Next Door's garden, stalking nettles, and the budding sycamore leaves whispered heavily of spring._

 _We finished off with brambles nicked from those invasive bramble stalks. We've come to hate them as much as Mara, since even if we don't garden we can't walk by them without being stabbed in the neck for our trouble, or having our sleeves snagged. Considering the number of lace collars those things have snared, cuffs they've unravelled and scratches they've given us, brambles for five was the_ _least_ _we were due._

 _Poppy, replete with food, stretched out under the sycamores' crowns and said to the sky, 'they say laughter interferes with breathing, but we've laughed today, and I don't know about you, but I feel I can breathe again_ _because_ _of it, not in spite of it. Girls, it's_ _good_ _to be unworried again, even if it doesn't last into tomorrow.'_

 _It should have been a surprise, hearing it voiced like that –what we've all been feeling –but it wasn't. I joined Poppy on the grass, shielding my eyes against the setting sun with the back of one hand and said, 'mums sometimes says a laugh can be as good as a prayer. I don't think I realised what that meant before, or if I did, I've forgotten since the war began. But she's right, it's every bit as good as a prayer. Promise we'll make an effort to laugh more, won't you, girls? I think I can if you will.'_

 _They all promised. Sitting under the sycamores with the sun streaking the sky gauzy oranges and ichorous yellows, reprieved of work and full of good food, it was an easy promise to make. I think –I hope –we'll be able to keep it._

 _Think mums, I'll be home soon, and then I'll be able to share with you in the trials of solemnity regarding little Rilla's concert. If it had been me –sympathy for the high drama of 15 or not, to say nothing of memories of what it was like –I don't think I_ _could_ _have kept a straight face confronted with that tale of the Irene, Rilla and the odd shoes. You are a marvel. So is she –_ _I_ _certainly couldn't have been so gracious –and to Irene Howard! –after so much adversity. At 15 I was just proud enough to not like to be thought so, and Irene's slights unfailingly rankled. Tell her brava from me, gives Jims a kiss (if Rilla will allow it!) and I'm enclosing one for you too._

 _Much love and see you soon,_

 _Nan_


	7. Chapter 7

_With thanks always for reading and/or reviewing. I write for you and love hearing from you._

* * *

Nan and Di returned without warning in the summer, for Red Cross work, they said, an unlooked for surprise which made Poppy exclaim on seeing them, 'Oh thank God! It's been frightful this summer with only Pilgrim to talk to, and _he_ won't talk to me, as he's convinced it's my fault Mara's in Halifax and not here.'

'No she isn't,' said Mara, appearing behind the twins, case still in hand.

'Nan rang and said she and Di were coming back, and was there anything I particularly wanted done to the garden, and –'

' –Mara said not to worry, she'd been thinking of coming back herself. I got the impression her mother was harder to wrest the kitchen from than Di. We met on the road coming up to the house.'

'I'm glad,' said Poppy sincerely. Pilgrim did not have to say anything. He threw all his stateliness and dignity away for the sake of streaking across the room and nuzzling his head under a kneeling Mara's outstretched arms, from which place of security he thrummed heartily. He overturned and decapitated a shepherdess in the process, which Poppy seized upon mentally as her justification for belatedly registering how white Di looked and how pinched Nan.

'No one,' she began cautiously, 'has been…'she couldn't finish.

'No one's been killed, no,' said Faith, tripping over Mara, offending Pilgrim and saving Poppy the effort of a complete thought all at once.

'Walter's gone, though.' She collapsed into the window seat, radiantly gold even when care- and travel-worn.

'That isn't your fault,' said Poppy staunchly to Di.

'I know, I think. We parted well, which is what matters. He says he'll be at peace with himself now that he's resolved to do something, and if that's true, I think I can even be glad for him. I hope it's true.'

'I'm sure it is,' said Poppy soothingly. Then, turning to Faith, 'and you? What brought you back –or was it the same?'

'No, I couldn't stand another night of Bruce crying his little heart out over the babies that drowned on the _Lusitania_. He's _six_ –he's supposed to be running through Rainbow Valley and climbing trees, skinning knees and fishing for trout in the stream. Instead he's earnestly petitioning God and entrusting the souls of departed children to Him. I was only there weeks but ye gods and little fishes, how Una and Rosemary bear those wide black eyes of his all year is beyond me.'

While she had been speaking the twins and Mara settled themselves among the squashy chairs and the unstable sofa, Pilgrim seizing upon Mara's lap at the first opportunity.

'Shall I make tea?' offered Poppy, moved by the sight of them so evidently worn out.

'No,' said Di and Mara as a unit, and curtailing sensible conversation for the next few minutes as everyone dissolved into much-needed laughter.

Summer passed in a haze of cicadas, crickets, sun and clothes for the Belgian children. Then, suddenly it was September, term was resuming and the girls of Swallowgate were peering in fascination at the latest parcel from Ingleside. It had come addressed to _the girls who pin hopes_ in Anne Blythe's handwriting, her mixed glee and affection for Walter's moniker for them apparent in the tracery of her writing. They laughed and exclaimed over that, and lost a good quarter-hour to guessing what it could possibly be that made the box so light, almost as if it were packed with air. It was Di who opened it in the end, and now, squinting into the packing crate, they were exactly none the wiser, or at any rate, Di wasn't. Poppy, after a peak in the box had an inkling, but it was such fun listening to the others' guesses that she hadn't the heart to rush in with logic and spoil their fun.

The box had come with two letters; the first from Mrs. Blythe lay open on the table, devoid utterly of explanation but brimming with poetry about the Island in autumn. The second epistle, courtesy of Susan Baker, was held tight in Di's hand, as yet unread.

'What on _earth_ was she thinking,' that young maid wanted to know, driven to italics by the absurdity of the situation.

'Never mind that,' said Faith, ever practical, 'what in God's name _is_ it?'

'That's easy,' said Poppy, who could resist no longer, her thin shoulders twitching with suppressed laughter, as she elbowed her way between the Inglesideans for a better look at their bounty, 'it's wool.'

'Wool?' said four incredulous voices back at her. Poppy blinked large grey eyes solemnly.

'Mouse, are you sure?'

'Has none of you seen wool before you spin it up? Read that letter Di, and see if I'm right. Bet you find I am –it certainly _smells_ of sheep.'

 _We have all been dying_ , began Susan Baker's letter without preamble. _One of the MacAllisters of the Upper Glen brought over a mass of wool in payment to your father for setting Simon McAllister's leg. No one could think what to do with it, and not even the twist set! But Cousin Sophia had had some green dye in, and_ _she_ _thought it might just do for making the stuff up into something useable, so we boiled it in that. Only Rilla's taken a notion she won't have any more green since buying that new hat of hers last Christmas, and I remembered Nan was knacky for setting the twist when she was little and sent the rest on to you._

'There!' said Nan, ' _what_ do you make of that, girls?'

'Only that your Susan Baker is raving mad,' said Mara companionably.

Di ran a dubious hand through the mass of untamed wool. 'She's certainly that. Nan, do you have _any_ memory how the transformation works? I know I haven't.'

'I might,' Nan said doubtfully. 'I could walk and spin at once…a long time ago. Do you remember?'

'Vividly,' said Faith and Di in unison. 'We used to find bits of fibre stuck to everything, skirts, trees, grass-stems, quilts…' Di trailed off and Faith grinned.

'I can't say I exactly relish reliving the experience.'

'Not even for the war-effort?' Poppy's giggling had mostly subsided, but she couldn't resist elbowing Faith playfully in the ribs.

'The things we do for this war-effort,' said Faith, but without much sincerity. No one knew better than the Swallowgate contingent the time Faith had invested in the Red Cross effort. She had certainly remarked often enough to the others that she felt herself to be doing her degree in her spare time.

'We have to do something with it,' said Nan, who was still stroking the wool as if it were a biddable cat. This did not agree at all with Pilgrim, who was twining his way round her legs and thrumming to rival any spinning wheel. 'Do you think…the colour might suit Jerry, mightn't it?' this was directed chiefly at Faith. Poppy, vainly scanning Susan's note over Di's shoulder in the hope it offered insights into the spinning process, caught the suggestion of Faith softening more than saw it, aware of the air going out of her as she deflated considerably.

'It's more likely to suit him than any of the others,' Faith said, extracting Nan's hand from the box and giving it a squeeze. 'And you're the only one of us with the least idea what to do with the stuff, bar Mouse, who I don't suppose will grudge you the project. Go on, have a go, make him something nice. It will be Christmas soon.'

Someone –Mara, Poppy thought –snorted at the very suggestion that their Mouse could bear a grudge. The idea seemed to strike them all as more absurd than the amassed wool in its packing crate, all raw and green, ready for spinning up. They traded smiles that shortly turned into grimaces as the prospect of the mountains of work waiting for them in various dells of the house reasserted themselves.

'I'd better take a brace and do something about graphing that last set of functions,' said Poppy, with a last look at the box of wool.

'And I suppose my verbs won't conjugate themselves,' said Faith, 'more's the pity.'

'Neither will this essay on Coleridge go anywhere without me prodding it,' said Di. 'I have half a mind to put him in the cupboard as a sign of poor cooperation.'

'I wish you wouldn't,' said Mara, who had spent the wee hours of the morning getting ahead on her reading, and now had only to master the part of Ariel. 'I don't much fancy opening one of our kitchen cupboards to a disgruntled poet.'

They departed in laughter, Nan to reacquaint herself with the drop-spindle, the others to work.

By the time Nan reappeared in the twin's shared room, trailing stray pieces of fibre and a most resentful Pilgrim singing the song of a forlorn and forsaken cat, Di had traded Coleridge for letter writing. She abandoned letter writing for nursing on the sight of Nan's hands, blistered after hours of flicking the spindle into motion and greened from the dye.

'I thought Susan wrote that the dye had set?' said Di, reaching reflexively for a jar of cream.

'She did. It mostly has. The excess is from where my fingers grew too hot pinching the draft. What kind of cream is that? It smells too nice for goose grease.'

'Beeswax and myrtle berries. Faith and I made it up while you were helping put finishing touches on Spider's concert hall. I hadn't realised you were serious enough about Jerry to willingly make a mangle of your hands in the name of a Christmas gift for him.'

'I'm told mud's cold. Anyway, I could say much the same to you.' Nan nodded in the direction of Di's writing desk and the telltale sheet of medicinal white paper, too small for an essay.

'I asked first,' said Di, still working the cream into the reddened whorls of her sister's hands. 'And anyway, I was never precious about my fingers.'

Nan's fingers had definitely born the brunt of her effort, but her hands were incontestably dry after so many hours of continuous work.

'All right, but it's your turn next. Where do I start?'

'I hear the beginning's not a bad place.'

'Do be serious,' said Nan who was rarely serious herself. 'We'll be here into next year if I start that evening in Rainbow Valley. Have I told you about the Harbour Light?'

'Yes,' said Di, who could still fuzzily recollect Nan's recounting in the aftermath of the dance and the outbreak of war, am idyll of a snatched hour among the Dead Lands –their childhood name for the rock peninsula by the light –in the ebbing tide.

'But you haven't got summer feet yet,' Di had said, 'the rocks must have been murder.'

'No worse than those slippers aunt Leslie sent,' Nan had said, and they had smothered their laughter in pillowslips embroidered with butterflies and smelling of roses.

Now Di put the lid back on the jar of cream, wiped her hands on her skirt and said, 'I know this war's driven almost everything else out of our minds, but I still remembered the way you looked telling me about it. The moon was behind you, lighting up the wind-bellied curtains and making you look as if you'd swallowed the moonlight.'

'I felt as if I had.. What I didn't tell you then was that Jerry asked me to wait. Nothing formal,' she said, seeing Di's eyes widen, 'not like –you'll know about Faith?'

'If you mean that she's engaged to Jem, I had an inkling. I suppose Jem told you he was planning on asking her?'

'He asked me what to say. I told him there were fairly well tried speeches for that sort of thing, and I couldn't see what was wrong with _Faith , will you marry me_. Anyway, in the event Faith tells you properly about it, I never said a word.'

'Naturally not.'

'The point is, this wasn't anything so concrete as that. Only an understanding that if –when –Jerry gets back, he'll ask properly. Make a thing of going to Ingleside and talking with dad and all the rest.'

'Accounting for the sacrifice of your hands.'

'I don't mind. All the spinning and plying feels more personal than if I'd just sat down and devoted a month of Sunday afternoons to grappling with cables and counting stitches in standard issue grey.'

'Not Sundays surely, spare a thought for Miss Cornelia's nerves. '

'She's not here, and if she were she might appreciate those are the only days I have going spare, between classes and Red Cross work.'

'Now then,' Nan bounced up onto the bed, tucked her feet under her knees and turned to Di, 'it's your turn. I _can_ work out some of it from letters –Andrew's handwriting looks like his sister's –but I don't want to. Taking for granted that it began with Walter bringing the pair of them to us for Christmas, how did it go on?'

All the while she was talking, she had been unpinning Di's hair, sending it in long russet and gingery coils down her back, so many spirals of spun sunset. Now she began to tease the tangles out with her fingers.

'I haven't your gift for stories, remember.'

'Then don't embroider it,' said Nan to the back of her sister's head.

Di didn't. The sun was sinking low over the hills, empurpling not only the sycamores but the whole world beyond their window. Nan went on combing Di's hair, and the sun threaded its way ever lower on the horizon and all the while Di unravelled the story of her correspondence with Andrew Blake. How it had begun with Ruthie's petition as she left the house that Di keep in touch with Andrew, how stilted and structured those early letters, how almost imperceptibly the ground had altered and formalities given way until one of them –Di couldn't have said who after so many months –had signed off almost carelessly the first _with love_ instead of _best wishes_ or whatever placeholder had once been sufficient.

The light was very low sunk in twilight by then. It dawned on Di as she told Nan of those first love letters that neither of them had taken trouble to light a lamp. She peered into the encircling dark and said, 'I haven't Walter's gift for poetry, I know that, but it was easier to put things down on paper. I mean I said things I never would have done in person. At dances I always come across cold and standoffish when it's only awkwardness' –here Nan clucked dissent –'and even when the Glen's thought you proud, it's never though you more than that. Writing was straightforward enough that I never had to worry about holding my own against comparisons with the rest of our set –no don't cluck, I mean that –say nothing of social nuances. What do you think Susan would say if she ever discovered we were writing on first-name terms before Easter?'

Nan, by then plaiting Di's hair for the evening, laughed around a mouthful of white ribbon and said indistinctly, 'She'd be at least as horrified as Miss Cornelia would be about my Sunday knitting. Ruthie would be pleased though.'

'I don't think Ruthie was conspiring,' said Di, relaxing into her sister's arms, 'only overwhelmed. All her brothers went within six months. Can you imagine what we'd have done if it had been Jem, Walter and Shirley leaving all at once like that?'

'If it's all the same to you,' said Nan, squeezing Di's shoulders, 'I'd as soon not. There are definite perils to a vivid imagination. I'm starting to feel them.'

'I don't envy you that. Not tonight. Let's at least try and sleep, shall we?'

'You haven't told me everything,' protested Nan, even as she turned down the corner of her apple-leaf quilt.

'I'll whisper it to you until you're asleep. You've heard most of it anyway. It's a less substantial story than yours or Faith's, less settled.'

'Well it's newer,' said Nan reasonably as she scrabbled under the quilt, motioning for her sister to join her. 'It would be.'

'It isn't that exactly. When I'm writing I can believe any number of things –the end of the war, that they'll all come back –on white nights though I wonder if we'd know how to talk to each other still with the war behind us and the world righted, if Andrew were to come back to Swallowgate.'

'All reunions are like that, tensile and terse while you try to cram a year's worth of happenings into five minutes for fear of silence. Wait a bit, and when it's all over and he's come back you can find out how to fill those pauses. Only you have to promise me that if you do, you'll tell me about it.'


	8. Chapter 8

_Apologies for being behindhand. There are definite dangers to letting you catch up to me when it comes to output, and this is one of them. Thanks always for reading and/or reviewing. I love the insights you bring to this story._

* * *

Carl went in October, the news born to Faith in a jaunty tongue-in-cheek thing purporting to be a letter. Di found her huddled over it, buried deep in one of the window seat's corners when she returned prematurely from a lecture on _Frankenstein._

'Dr. McCallum forgot he was teaching again,' said Di with the air of one well used to this professorial habit after eight weeks of classes. 'So there's been no word on Mary Shelley and I'd mind if he didn't…'she stopped on seeing Faith on the window seat. She had been working on an operating gown, and it lay where Faith had left it when she ran for the afternoon post, needle sticking up at an angle, seams half-pinned, and sewing box ajar, all quite forgotten. Gently Di folded the pin book and closed the sewing basket, registering with a bone-deep sense of dread the letter in Faith's curled fist.

Wordlessly, Faith held out the letter, dated to the week after Carl's birthday. It began _To my favourite sister,_ and ended, _I solemnly promise to come home to you_.

'He'd better,' said Di, handing the letter back and sitting down at Faith's feet. 'There are a lot of people who won't forgive him otherwise.'

'When Mummy died,' said Faith apropos of nothing, 'everyone –Jerry and Dad –worried about Una. People tended to, because she was small and quiet, and what Mara would call _sleekit_. But I'd shared a room with her for eight years by then; I'd seen her wake up in a panic over a nightmare and turn over to sleep again without a murmur. I knew there was steel in her if the others didn't, and that meant I could worry about Carl. Well _I_ didn't know children could be elastic, did I? Not then. All I knew was that our world had ended, he was younger even than Una, that he was the only one to get Mummy's eyes in colour and shape, and that he had stuck to her like a shadow until she got too ill to keep house. When that happened he used to slip into her room and sit at her feet solving jigsaws with pictures of grasshoppers, or making a study of the spider webs on the skirtingboard.'

Here Faith unstuck herself from the window seat and slipped from it onto the floor next to Di. She tucked Carl's declaration of enlistment into her skirt, and leaning her head on the edge of the window seat, with no mind for the half-pinned operation gown that was surely jabbing the branch of her neck uncomfortably, said, 'There was a bad fortnight before Aunt Martha came but after Mummy died where the four of us peeled in two; Jerry and Una, Carl and me, little islanded units that orbited the same world without reference to each other. We knit together again in the face of awful Aunt Martha, we never wholly sundered those bonds. Jerry will always watch over Una with the fierceness of a lioness over its cub… and Carl's my baby brother, world without end. He's going away to near-certain destruction, and worse than that, he's going alone, and he's never been really alone –I've never let him be – except that night in the Methodist graveyard that nearly killed him. It's superstitious, and idiotic, and no doubt in no way fitting for a minister's daughter,' here Faith smiled, 'but I can't shake the feeling that he would be safer if he were going to war with one of the others –if Shirley were going too, or if he'd gone with Jerry instead of being his circumspect self and getting the measure of this war while teaching at Harbour Head. And he mustn't be killed, Di, because of all of us he's the most like Mummy. Her gentleness, her steadiness and her readiness to laugh. If anything happens to him… '

Faith's voice, which had heretofore sounded unnaturally high, even childish, snapped abruptly.

'It won't be your fault,' said Di firmly, rubbing circles under Faith's shoulders to ease the knots in them. 'You'd never have been able to stop him, no one can when Carl seizes upon an idea.'

'You're not angry? My wishing Shirley were there with him?'

'Angry? When Shirley's reading up on aeroplanes in his free hours? If I were, he'd never forgive me.'

Di wrapped an arm around Faith's back at the place where nape met spinal column and pulled her golden head onto her shoulder. She thought obliquely that she ought to offer to make tea, but couldn't bring herself to dislodge Faith when she was so peaceably cuddled against her. Let Poppy do it when she came in from her own class in –well it wouldn't be long now. Or Mara, who could be heard on the stairs only because she was preceded by a streak of shadow making an almighty racket that proved to be Pilgrim.

'What happened?' asked Faith, jerked into the immediate present by the banshee-wail of their cat.

'Nan's setting the twist on that wool,' said Mara, as if this explained everything and bracing herself against the banister the better, Di supposed, to take in the tableau they made at the foot of the window seat, but no doubt also to steer well clear of Pilgrim. Having run out of stair he was now racing like St Elmo's fire around the confines of the sitting room, while Faith and Di sat with their knees drawn up under their chins in an effort not to hinder his flight.

'Mm-hm,' said Faith critically, as Pilgrim took a calculated leap onto the window seat and overturned the contents of her neglected sewing basket sending pins and thread cuttings tumbling onto the floor.

'What did he _do_ , exactly? Mistake a drying skein for a dead mouse?'

'You're not far wrong,' said Mara, coming all the way down the stairs and sitting on the bottom step. There was a crash as Pilgrim collided with an end table and sent two shepherdesses and a lamp after Faith's sewing things. 'The wee devil's only found out the hard way that boiling water's hot and not for pouncing on, however many skeins of wool may be soaking in it. He thought he'd have a stab at killing one or two. Nan was thoroughly unimpressed, Pilgrim even more so.'

'Oh is that all?' asked Di, gingerly sweeping up the shards of shepherdess; they pooled, little pieces of porcelain and the smoky column of the chimneypiece, at the edge of the carpet. She gave the chimneypiece a critical look.

'I think it will do.' She held it up for the others' opinion.

'Yes,' said Mara vaguely, and with more purpose to Pilgrim, ' _Sguir e_ , you daft cat. Come here.' She got an arm around his middle as he came haring past her, and pulled him, flattened ears, flailing claws and all, bodily onto her lap. Not at all impressed with this treatment, Pilgrim made a bid for freedom, only to find Mara's fingers tangled in the scruff of his neck and himself suspended over the floor.

'I did _tell_ you to stop,' said Mara mildly over so much indignant yowling. 'I want to have a look at your paws. They can't be so abused if you can run like a demon with Hell's hounds at your tail. I don't suppose either of you is going to tell me what was happening before our resident _cat sith_ visited chaos upon you?'

'You don't really think he's that,' said Faith, spectacularly dodging the question Di thought.

'I'm beginning to think it.'

Mara was, to all intents and purposes talking to the pads of Pilgrim's paws as she scrutinised them for damage, a process which, as far as Di could work out, was greatly endangering her person as claws shot out of their sheaths and flailed violently. Mara only clucked and Di couldn't work out if she meant this for the cat or for Faith. In the event, both took it to heart; Pilgrim ceased his assault on Mara's eyes and Faith offered her the letter to read.

'From Carl,' she said, and bent over the sewing box again. It was by now fully restored to its haphazard order, but Di and Mara by tacit agreement neglected to notice. Mara held the letter at arm's length from a writhing Pilgrim, squinted at it, grimaced, and said only, 'I'm so sorry. Leave-taking's no easer for being absent when it happens –worse maybe. Did you see much of him over the summer?'

'Not enough,' said Faith, scuttling up onto the window seat. 'But then it's never enough time, is it?'

'No. Off you go then, terrorise someone else, why don't you, you unholy menace? Poppy might appreciate having your claws sunk inch-deep into her legs, _I_ don't. Faith, shall I make tea?'

Faith and Di exchanged looks expressive of their mutual and ongoing incredulity at Mara's knack for fitting any number of disparate thoughts into the same breath. Mara never noticed, preoccupied as she was with dislodging Pilgrim from his perch on her knees and attempting to get to the kitchen before Di.

'One of you had better,' said Faith, eyes flashing like sunspots. 'There's someone at the door, and they won't care for my attempt at tea. I always get the measure wrong and it stews.'

'Only because left to you, you forget to pour out,' said Mara, already halfway to the kitchen, Pilgrim at her heels thrumming hopefully.

'I'll see who it is, shall I?' said Di.

This turned out to be Ruthie pink cheeked with cold, and breathless from the effort of lugging what Di at first took to be a wagon wheel up to the front door.

'For Nan,' said Ruthie. 'Mama was clearing out our box-room thinking it might have surplus rags or something similarly useful to the Red Cross effort at the moment, and ran across it. She thought it might help.'

It was at this point that Di recognised the wagon wheel for the castle spinning wheel it was, and her eyes widened in part amusement, part surprise.

'You never got that here on your own?'

'Oh no, Poppy's sweetheart helped.'

'Poppy's _what_?'

'Isn't he that?' asked Ruthie, 'I thought he must be, they were talking ever so eagerly about something.'

'Complex derivatives probably, and I wouldn't know if he were. Mouse isn't much for telling me things. You'd far better ask Faith. Come into the warm, you have apple-spots.'

It was Ruthie's eyes that widened this time.

'Apple spots?'

'Anne Blythe's name for them. What had Ruthie better ask me?' No guests being forthcoming, Faith had followed Di to the door. 'Do come in,' she added seeing Ruthie still on the stoop, 'all the heat's running out of the house, and if it goes you'll have our contracting pneumonia on your conscience.'

'About Mouse's admirer,' said Di, and closed the door behind Ruthie and the castle wheel.

'Mouse has no such thing,' said Faith, a smile warm in her voice. 'I gather everyone says she has, but there's nothing in it. Where is she, by the by? She'd usually be home by now. Ruthie, what in the name of goodness is that thing you've got?'

'She's gone with whoever-it-is-who-isn't-a-sweetheart-'

'Peter,' said Faith. 'He's got a name. Much less effort to say.'

'Peter then. Anyway, she said they were going to see if there were any late chickadees in the park to feed. They've taken some of the seed from the jar in the milk cupboard, I'm to tell Mara, or perhaps you'd better. And that's a spindle.'

'Auntie Phil's bit of charity towards Nan's fingers,' amplified Di. 'At least, I think it will stop her working the pads of her fingers raw.'

'Still?' said Faith as Ruthie grimaced.

Di began to exposit against the difficulty of plying thick wool on a drop-spindle but was cut off by Mara, her voice floating wryly down the hall from the sitting room.

'I thought you wanted tea that wasn't stewed?'

'Shall I -?' Ruthie had precariously raised the spindle and was attempting to navigate the narrow corner of the hall with it. Observing the risk to a nearby collection of shepherdesses and ornaments, Di and Faith rushed to forestall her with reassurances that no doubt Peter could be persuaded to move the thing into the sitting room when he inevitably saw Poppy back to the house.

'He'll probably come in for tea or something,' said Faith. 'He often does.'

'But they're not walking out?'

'Oh no, nothing like that. Mouse says so.' There was a dimple in the corner of Faith's mouth as she said it.

'I will never understand,' said Ruthie, eschewing a squashy chair and settling herself on the sitting room floor, 'how anyone so gregarious as Poppy got a name like 'Mouse.''

'She eats like one,' said Mara, handing Ruthie a piece of the cherry-blossom china. 'Nibbles at things. Nothing to do with quietude or timorousness. Is that drinkable?'

'Mm,' said Di, in spite of having done no more than inhale the rich spiced smell of sun and citrus that promised Ceylon. 'Did you tell Nan there was tea?'

'I took her up a cup. She's guarding that wool from Pilgrim. Not,' said with asperity, 'that he's quite gomerel enough to try a stunt like that again. If he does, he can see to his own paws.'

Ruthie, sipping gingerly at the hot tea, felt the ripple of their collective amusement and smiled without really grasping it. Sensing as much, and wanting the distraction it offered, Faith began the retelling of Pilgrim's most recent misadventure, which Mara and Di seized from her whenever they thought they could tell it better.

'Anyway,' said Faith as she forcibly reclaimed the ending, 'it's quite convinced Mara we're entertaining a devil unawares –or something. What exactly _was_ it you called him?'

'Only a monster of sorts,' said Mara with a wave of the hand not holding the teapot. 'I think I mostly meant it too. I'm not risking denying him milk at Halloween anyway. Ruthie?' She held the teapot up enquiringly and Ruthie held out her teacup for replenishment.

'Whatever he is,' said Ruthie, eyes sparkling, 'and wherever he came from, he brought you with him Mara. Don't you think?'

Faith and Di laughed assent, the more so in the face of Mara's protestations that she was not to do with 'that ungodly cat.'

''In the first place, he's heathen. In the second, I haven't his claws, nor his streak of witchcraft.'

Faith and Di, who had long thought that Mara _had_ , having seen her too often charm –no other word for it –Pilgrim out of an ill mood when no one else could, forbore to comment.

'No? Even so,' said Ruthie thoughtfully, 'God help the person that crosses you.'

It should have been a little thing, something for them to laugh over, but the memory of the spring rift with Walter, and the sharpness of Mara when she had so unswervingly taken Di's side in it, was too recent. There was just enough sincerity in Ruthie –and insufficient levity – to cause the atmosphere to tilt and the air to go out of the room. Unbidden, memories of that last tense end-of-term came back; Walter's brittle fragility, Di's hurt and Mara's instinctive defence of her, and Ruthie like a darning needle between them trying to pull everything neat and whole again. The current between the girls shifted uneasily, and for what seemed an unending moment Di felt the subtle weights of different friendships against her chest, certain the strain would pull her in two. It was hard not to be sympathetic to Ruthie, who had been caught for months in the middle of the fracture with Walter like a sticking pin, she had found herself in that disquieted centre often enough growing up –she was there _now_. The memory of Mara's unlooked for, immoveable support, even sanction against her falling out with Walter was stronger though, the welcome of that anchor still to vivid.

'Never without just cause,' said Di over the nervous chatter of the cherry-blossom china. 'The rest of us rush into battles without a thought, I know I do. Mara always chooses hers.'

Faith opened her mouth to avert a quarrel, found she could think of nothing meaningful enough to pull this off successfully, and was saved by Poppy. She had appeared in the sitting room unnoticed by all except Mara, whose cat's ears must have caught the sound of her ingress, because she offered Poppy a cup of tea ready-poured as Poppy dropped down next to her on the floor.

'If she were anything so fey as one of our faeries,' said Poppy coolly, and with the slightest of stresses on _our_ , 'you'd be much safer not drinking that tea. No surer way into Faerie, you know. I don't mean the Andrew Lang sort either.'

'Oh no, much too small,' said Mara of the creatures inhabiting the multicoloured Fairy Books.

Poppy accepted mechanically the milk jug Mara offered her and made a show of wariness over her tea for Ruthie's benefit. Di looked to Faith, saw she too wanted to laugh but couldn't remember how, and looked back at Poppy, cautiously essaying a sip of the tea. It was only what she always did to gauge the temperature, and another day they might have smiled at her theatricality, but unease was still threaded like whipcord between them, and there was something in this measured display of dedication from silky, optimistic Poppy that stifled humour. Evidently deeming the tea optimum drinking temperature she took a more substantial mouthful and Di let out a breath she hadn't realised she was holding.

'You do make an uncannily good Ariel though,' said Poppy to Mara as an afterthought. 'I suppose they've told you that in the classes?'

' _To every article_ ,' said Mara, her voice rounder and richer than ever in its dramatics.

All at once the air seemed to come back into the room. Poppy was murmuring her approval as she stretched cat-like beside Pilgrim on the floor, and Faith found her way into a remember-when Rainbow Valley and the day Carl smuggled a live chipmunk into the Manse for a pet. That was why by the time Nan appeared on the stair, hands red from water and arms upraised as she carried her burden of sodden wool into the kitchen to dry and full of her latest 'economy' –namely a desire for wool that dried instantly –they were laughing, all evidence of imminent and personal Armageddon obliterated.


	9. Chapter 9

_With thanks to all you reading and/or reviewing. I can't believe we're at Christmas of 1915_ _already!_

* * *

The Siege of Kut was well underway, and General Haig had replaced John French –to the dubious relief, so Anne Blythe's letters had it, of Susan Baker –by the time the girls who pinned hopes emerged from their exams.

There was no question that year of having a Swallowgate Christmas; Faith had taken it for granted that they would, and to that end packed away her French grammar, and devoted a gruelling half-hour to what Una would have called 'housekeeping,' purely with a mind to discerning how much money could be spared on Christmas gifts for the others. Poppy, witnessing this particular battle, had offered help, to which Faith had replied by tossing her head and assuring Poppy that somewhere one of her Meredith ancestors was surely turning in her grave at the thought of talking _money_ with someone not family. That sent Poppy into peals of laughter that proved contagious, and was followed by the suggestion–once her breath had come back –that as Poppy had errands to run herself, would Faith's Meredith ancestors object to her joining in the shopping expedition. It was some minutes before Faith, rosy cheeked and clutching a stitch in her side, could acquiesce, dismissing the Meredith ancestors with the wave of her hand. There was a flash as a circlet of pearls caught the sun.

'You've taken to wearing it properly then,' said Poppy mildly, gathering purse, handbag and gloves together.

'You knew?'

'Well you aren't exactly covert about it,' said Poppy, sorting through so much clutter for mitt thins to be worn under the gloves. Winter that year was cold but dry, and Poppy was not at all convinced that the kind of gloves her mother believed young ladies wore –though certainly nice to look at –were going to do much to keep blood in her fingers, which were prone to losing all feeling without warning even on mild days.

'Your hand was always going to your neck when you wore it there,' said Poppy, emerging triumphant with the desired wool undergloves.

'Trust you to notice. Does anyone tell you that you're terrifyingly clever by turns, Mouse?'

Poppy shrugged diffidently. 'What are you looking for anyway?'

'I might ask the same of you. Have you run out of stuff for tatting?'

'No. It isn't only you who thinks of the holiday, you goose,' Poppy affectionately said and linked her arm through Faith's so that they descended the stair together.

'Good. You can tell me who needs what then. I'm at a loss for ideas, and not so dab as the rest of you when it comes to handicraft.'

Poppy exhaled audibly through her nose, little clouds of white steam rising into the air in proof of this dismissal.

'You've a lovely hand at drawing,' said Poppy, with a sincerity startling in its evident totality.

'Do you think so?' said Faith, torn between embarrassment that her absent-minded sketches of everything from the girls who pinned hopes to her overworked brain's imaginative representation of stem-changing verbs should not have eluded Poppy and pleasure at the compliment. Poppy noticed, her eyes widened owlishly and she squeezed the arm linked through hers as she said, 'Of course. Stop and tilt your head back a minute –there will be ice on your face if you cry.'

'Mummy could draw,' said Faith, startling herself as much as Poppy, whose eyes went so wide that they looked like grey moons. All those nights in the little architectural afterthought of a bedroom they shared and Faith had never mentioned her mother except to say Carl had her eyes, and Poppy, gem that she was had never once pressed her to talk about her.

'Everyone used to say so when they came to the Maywater Manse. She drew flowers mostly –and us as babies, I think, though no one saw those pictures. I mean we tended not to put them on display. I knew I looked like her though without her eyes, everyone used to say that too, but I used desperately to want more than that, because I couldn't see it. Mother had looked like –well she looked like a prayer-book angel, maybe, and I looked like a ragamuffin. So when I started drawing it was of her, because I thought if I could catch her just right I'd see me, or see what people were seeing of her in me. I couldn't do it though, still can't, so I never thought that maybe she'd given me that part of her too.'

'Well I don't know,' said Poppy, 'I've never seen any of her pictures of flowers, and I don't know what she looked like. But you _can_ draw –well –and in the right mood, curled up in that window seat, I bet some unsuspecting soul would take you for a prayer-book angel too. At least,' said Poppy, dimpling, 'until you got that glint in your eye that means mischief.'

'I have _not_ –'began Faith, but Poppy affected not to hear her over the screech of the wind. Tired of walking bent double against the gale-force of it, they ducked under the overhang to the butcher's shop for respite.

'Look,' said Poppy, 'I've got to get chalk, I need it for pattern-tracing and I've run out. Why don't you go and see if there's such a thing as a niddy-noddy in Mr. McPherson's store? Nan's set her heart on one, she's that tired of making skeins by wrapping them round chair-backs, and I don't blame her, but I also can't afford it. We can give it to her jointly though. I'll give you my share of the money when I catch you up.'

Faith nodded and was across the road and deep in the heart of McPherson's Haberdashery before it occurred to her that Poppy could have as easily purchased her chalk there as at the art supply store –more easily in fact. Then Poppy was there talking hatpins for Ruthie and notebooks for Nan, who had expressed a wish to try writing her economies down with the vague thought of spinning them into 'proper' stories, and what did Faith think Di would like?

'Letter paper,' said Faith promptly.

They lost an agreeable afternoon to peering through windows of the more extravagant places and conjuring the things they would buy from them if they could – a new hat for Faith, thick gloves for Poppy –and deliberating over the things they _could_ have. Faith found letter paper well-suited to Di, thick, creamy and plain, the kind that would easily stand up to writing on both sides. Poppy was delighted in a sturdily efficient fish-knife for Mara, the one that had come with Swallowgate being by that creature's accounts at best dull and unusable, at worst possessed of a demon bent on maiming the wielder by method of chopping their fingers off at the knuckle. Faith, observing this purchase said, 'It's going to be a very culinary-themed gift giving if Mara carves anything more for Nan to use baking.'

'Oh she is,' said Poppy seriously. 'I've seen her working on the pieces of a butter dish.'

'Don't tell me, the covered dish we have is somehow defective.'

'I think she thinks Nan will remember to use one that's made for her,' said Poppy, and they walked up the lane to Swallowgate laughing.

They had only got as far as the hall when they were overwhelmed with the aromatic smell of cinnamon and cloves, which perfume they took to mean Mara or Di had got control of the fruitcake. In fact it was Nan, ladling pressed apple juice into a vat on the stovetop and seasoning it accordingly. She decanted some of it promptly into mugs unasked on seeing them, windswept and noses frost-stung.

'We may yet get snow,' said Poppy, nursing the mug of hot cider. Faith, swallowed a mouthful herself, added her assent and leaned against the counter, letting the rising steam settle over her like mist. The cider was a warm golden weight in her stomach and she was glad of it, but it was still too cold to warm up by inches. Poppy seemed to think so too; she came and flanked Nan on the other side of the stove, holding her fingers out to absorb the heat of it. The index finger especially was white and bloodless.

'What I would like,' said Poppy, commencing the form for one of Nan's economies, 'is hot water bottles I could fit in my gloves. What do you think? Can it be done?'

Nan hummed consideration and gave the cider a stir.

'Does it need anything? More cloves? More cinnamon?'

'Nutmeg,' said Faith and Poppy together.

Nan reached across the counter and Faith for the hard ball of the nutmeg seed and began to grate it into the cider, leaving the air heavy with the sweet, nutty scent of it. Faith only half noticed though, her focus was on Poppy's index finger, still white from knuckle to nail.

'Does that hurt at all?'

Poppy blinked owlishly, caught off guard. 'This? A little.' She flexed her finger and grimaced. 'It'll go in a minute, it always does. Mum's hands are the same.'

'Try turning a windmill with your arm –away from the stove,' hastily added by Faith as an afterthought.

Poppy went, and did, and let out a squeal of startlement when blood rushed back into her fingers and left them stinging.

'Oh! How did you know that would work?'

'Lucky guess,' said Faith. 'It had to be faster than waiting on the heat of the hot cider to take effect.' Still, she made a mental note to write to Jem and tell him about it and ask for his opinion. She'd never seen anything like Poppy's hand before, healthy and serviceable bar that one bloodless digit.

'Is it always your index finger?'

'No. Sometimes it's the middle one, sometimes both. Why?'

'She's beginning to sound quite the nurse,' said Nan, lacing an arm around Faith's shoulders and giving them an affectionate squeeze with the hand not stirring the cider.

'Yes, quite,' said Poppy. She took another sip of cider, frowned, assured Nan that no, nothing was wrong with it, and tried ineffectively to look over at Faith unnoticed.

'You're all right Mouse,' said Faith kindly, 'I'm not going anywhere, I promise. As you say, much too much mischief in me –a very imperfect nurse I'd make!'

'Oh you'd charm your way in,' said Poppy loyally, but there was a smile warm in her voice, 'and no doubt cure the patients with laughter. They'd be glad of you. It's the doctors you'd drive to heart attacks.'

'Yes, and then where will the country be?' asked Faith and Poppy abandoned her empty mug to curl up at their feet a ball of quivering, silent mirth.

Then it was Christmas, or near enough for the purposes of Swallowgate. Ruthie came over, arms burdened with edibles and gifts, and they sat down by the fire to unwrap what bounty couldn't be eaten while Pilgrim writhed like a contented snake at their feet, his back to the fire and purring a hearty endorsement of any occasion that gave him so much brown paper and string to tackle. He arched his back and bared his belly so that Poppy laughed and said, 'you weren't wrong about him Mara –see the white spot on his chest! Did you know it was there?'

'Hm?' said Mara, who had been pouring over Di's gift of a dresser scarf in blue and yellow bud flowers. 'One stranded satin stitch takes ages,' she was saying in astonishment when Poppy intervened with the discovery of the mark on Pilgrim's chest.

'Oh that, no. But I did _tell_ you he was a faerie, no?'

'I thought it was you being Romish,' said Poppy laughing helplessly, which revelation effectively caught the other's attention and halted any meaningful opening of gifts.

'I thought you knew,' said Mara 'you _knew_ I wasn't going with you to church on Sunday –what did you think?'

'That you'd found something that took precedence,' said Nan, who had never given this much thought. 'Another committee or something.' She shrugged.

'Or possibly went to chapel,' said Faith, who couldn't remember a time when she hadn't been aware of the vast divide between the Presbyterians and the Methodists.

'Or caught the afternoon service,' this offering from Di. There was a pause Poppy evidently felt expected to fill, because her grey eyes went round as full moons and she said, 'Oh I can be exclamatory if you like, but I don't need to be. I knew. I thought all of us did,' and she promptly resumed her ministrations to Pilgrim's throat. Simultaneously she extracted a clumsily wrapped package from her pocket and handed it to Mara.

'But I've had my gift from you,' said Mara protesting. 'It's not for you. Open it.' Which contradictory sentiments caused such confusion that Mara _did_ , exposing a round wicker ball possessed of a bell and something else at its core.

'For your cat,' said Poppy, still stroking the silky branch of Pilgrim's throat.

'He's yours, not mine,' said Mara, prodding at what looked like a faerie's teabag.

'Not even notionally,' said Poppy. 'I only happened to find him. See?'

Pilgrim had leapt up onto Mara's lap and was now interestedly nosing the ball.

'That thing you're prodding at has silvervine in it. All our cats back home think it's better than catmint.'

'And you thought what we really needed was a means of guaranteeing this devil had at least one mad half hour a day?' demanded Mara, scratching idly behind the more battered of Pilgrim's ears.

Poppy shrugged. 'I wanted to see if I could make it. Robbie was ace at them, and I'd watched him weave them enough.'

'How is he?' Mara set the ball rolling across the floor and Pilgrim tore after it with the look of a badly domesticated tiger about him. Another shrug from Poppy.

'In one piece, as far as I can gather. He doesn't write a straight letter though.'

'Neither does Carl,' said Faith. 'Part of me's glad, because it means the war hasn't touched that fundamental part of himself that makes him _Carl_ , part of me wants to throttle him for daring to make light of things like artillery fire.'

Di rather looked as if she wished Walter had lighted upon this trick, and for a little while they fell to talking about the war, interrupted occasionally by sap popping on the cedar logs in the fire and the chime of the bell as Pilgrim battled with it, paws flailing.

'Jerry's the same –or does he write sensibly to you, Faith?'

'Jerry? Sense? The closest I get from him is the odd sketch of wherever he is. I hope he left off teasing long enough to be properly glad of that jumper you sent though.'

'Yes,' said Nan, who though always apple-blossom in complexion was turning a healthy pink by the firelight. 'He said it was just what was called for and hoped it hadn't cut in _very_ much to the time I spent pulling apart perfectly good narrative or taxed me unduly.' She looked down doubtfully at her hands, blistered over and calloused from hours of spinning, and speckled brown with the pressure points accrued from knitting so long.

'I'm still trying to find a way of dodging that last question,' she said to Faith, rather forgetting the others were there. 'He always marvelled at my hands, at their softness. He wouldn't know them now.'

'I expect he would,' said Faith. 'Jerry's the last person to devalue hard work, certainly not yours,' and she reached for one of Nan's hands, still small and dainty as a child's, and squeezed it between hers.

The silence arising from this declaration had almost reached the boiling point of endurance when Nan said suddenly to Faith, 'You've still a gift left to open,' and recollected the occasion that had brought them together in the first place. It was large and flat, with Popp's up-and-down copperplate on the paper, which came away to reveal a box.

'It's a plant, naturally,' said Faith, apparently sincerely of the flat box on her lap. It was perhaps two inches tall, broader than it was long, and made of good, soft wood.

'Oh yes, that's right, the well-known carton plant,' said Poppy, matching her tone for tone. 'Grows excessively well on window seats, preferably if squashed by students and cats. Do open it, you goose.'

Faith did and the joke, such as it was, went out of her in a whoosh of breath. 'Poppy,' she said carefully, 'Oh Poppy, you didn't.'

But Poppy had; the evidence was there in the box; almost compulsively Faith picked up the charcoals, pencils, and tubes of oils, studying them as if they were strange and alien to her. Faith looked at them, felt the satiny sheen of the lining, and was suddenly aware that her eyes were hot and stinging as if someone had taken one of the nettles Mara was forever battling against in the garden to them, and it wasn't only from the sharp acrid smell of the paints or the charcoal dust.

'I wasn't going to,' said Poppy, 'but what you said that day we went out –I thought –'

And as suddenly as it had come, the stinging sensation was gone and Faith was laughing.

'Chalk,' she managed between waves of laughter, 'you said –you needed –chalk.'

'Well I could hardly tell you to stand about idly while I looked into a Christmas gift for you,' said Poppy reasonably. 'I wasn't even sure they would have what I wanted. Is that the right kind of paper?'

'Exactly. Come here.' Faith put out an arm and snared Poppy, pulling her clumsily but lovingly into a hug.

'Stay that way,' said Poppy, pleased to see her laughing. Quick as a flash she had eeled out of Faith's arms and established herself at the harp, cradling it on one arm, and waking the strings with the other. It was badly out of tune, but no matter; they didn't need perfection, only diversion.

'What shall we have?' said Poppy to Faith over the swell and ripple of the strings. Faith thought, then launched imperfectly into 'Quem Pastores Laudevere' adapting the Latin as and when her memory misgave her, to the entertainment of the others, who were not long joining her. They moved on to 'Green Grow the Rushes O' at Ruthie's request and then 'Here We Come A-Wassailing' at Nan's. Someone suggested 'Away in a Manger,' and Mara, eyes gleaming dismissed it as 'sen-ti- _men_ -tal _non_ sense,' her natural teuchter deliberately exaggerated to the purpose, much to Poppy's amusement. They sang heartily, and all the while Faith's hands flew unthinking across the paper, growing black with charcoal as she caught here the arc of Poppy's arm against the harp, there Di with her arm around Ruthie's angular shoulders, Nan in the act of stoking the fire, hands braced capably against the heat of it, and in an unguarded moment, the smile that betrayed Mara as she bent over Pilgrim to accept the wicker ball back from him, just visible at the corner of her mouth.

It was, Faith said later as she and Poppy got ready for bed, a thoroughly successful evening.

'Do you think so?' said Poppy around a yawn, and rubbing the stiffness out of the arm that had held the harp.

'Definitely. I wish you were coming back with us. Ingleside would love you –and you it – and we could have our own patch perpetual sunshine. But then,' said Faith, catching a yawn off of Poppy, 'I suppose your family are glad of you for much the same reason. Don't you ever feel laid low by it all, Mouse?'

'Sometimes,' said Poppy thoughtfully. 'At three in the morning when I can't sleep and Pilgrim is going toe to toe with whatever it is that lives in our roof, and all I can hear is his screaming. Then I remember it isn't over yet –or more likely I just catch a snatch of Mara running lines –and think of what you'd do –'

'Me?' said Faith, startled.

'Oh yes. You're masses more capable than me. You do so much more. But then, we always think other people get things more right than we do, don't we? Well, so, I think of you, or Mara come to that, or Di, or Nan spinning that wool…all of you up to your elbows in half a dozen ongoing projects, and tell myself that there's nothing to be gained by dooming all our men to death before it's happened.'

'Write that for me on a sampler, will you Mouse, and stick it somewhere I can see it? I think it would help.'

'Remind me before next Christmas, and I'll give it to you then,' said Poppy drowsily. 'And draw up a tract to pin where _I_ can see it. We'll both remember then.'

There was laughter between them, then. A moment, and then from the depths of her pillow, 'And as I won't be there to say it on the day, Happy Christmas Faith.'

'You too. Happy Christmas Mouse.'


	10. Chapter 10

_Thank you as ever to those of you reading and/or reviewing._

* * *

 _Swallowgate,_

 _Kingsport,_

 _January 1916_

 _Dear mums,_

 _I am thinking of Ingleside with a vengeance this evening, having just extricated myself from an enthusiastic and derisive discussion of Ford's failed peace mission. We'd all been saying for months it would come to nothing, and I know, because I was home when the failure was announced that Susan was doing much the same. Even Susan though couldn't match the utter disdain Mara managed to inject into the word 'flu' in tonight's discussion._

 _We have been having one of our gatherings, which always leave me with the distinct impression that the entirety of the university women have congregated in our sitting room, though in fact it is only the members of the College Red Cross. When I crept away Faith and Poppy were deep in discussion with Faith's fellow linguistic acrobats (Mara's name for them, she's what Susan would call 'knacky' with names) about Montenegro, which looks ever more doomed._

 _Mara was, as you'll not be the least surprised to hear, at the quiet centre of a group of dramatists who were debating the two versions of Marlowe's_ _Faus_ _t in-between damning Mr Ford for having the ill-luck to catch 'flu and plotting the best military strategy to be used at Erzurum._

 _Di and Ruthie were closeted in one of the inglenooks poring over a letter to the exclusion of the rest of us and talking very animatedly to judge from the way Ruthie's hands flapped. In my more selfish moments I envy Ruthie those animated discussions, because I have begun to suspect Di tells her more than she does me. In my better, more gracious moods I am aware that the world turns like that, and that we must all leave our harbours for new horizons eventually. I had supposed Di and I would go together, is all it is._

 _Besides, I was hardly abandoned to keep my own company. Peter, who reads mathematics with Poppy, and who has taken to joining forces with us, sat talking companionably to me while setting a sock with as much capability as Di or Mara. Something he said makes me think he's taken his share of ribbing for this, but not from the girls who pin hopes;_ _I think we're all quietly glad that –all Poppy's insistences that she_ _isn't_ _being courted to the contrary –at least one of us needn't be made heartsick in the name of patriotism._

 _Anyway, Peter made a valiant attempt this evening to interweave discussion about the Siege of Kut with_ _Clarissa_ _–you were right, it is a shockingly bad book and length does not equal virtue. I told him I was seriously tempted to write my first essay of this term with great succictness; 'Clarissa dies a virtuous woman. Lovelace is exposed' and wash my hands of it. He dared me to write it and has threatened to take pains to find out from Poppy if I commit to it or not. To this end no doubt he crossed the room to join in with the linguistic acrobats and Poppy strategising on behalf of Montenegro, and I came away to write to you._

 _You'll be pleased to hear that we saw New Year's in with due ceremony. Mara's family have always made more of an occasion of it than Christmas, which revelation had us demanding to know why she should have left them for it. All she said though was that she had as much right to be away from family as we had. I think that might be Mara-speak for having missed us; she's hardly the world's most overtly sentimental creature. Though from the way she's disappeared into reading_ _Galatea_ _I think it might owe as much to a difficulty in studying easily with six younger siblings and assorted nieces and nephews underfoot. She hasn't said so though; Mara's no more disloyal than she is sentimental._

 _Accordingly we had as close to a feast as we could manage for New Year's Eve; nothing elaborate, but a good amount of turnips, the last of the broad beans eked out from their corner of the cold cupboard, and a game hen. For a sweet I baked an orange shape that even Susan couldn't have faulted. We ate it all with a prayer for the well-being of all the men we'd sent away at the forefront of our minds but also in a spirit of optimism. There are things that I've learned about myself from this war, and while I wouldn't trade them I_ _would_ _like to know Mara and Poppy under more carefree circumstances._

 _After we'd eaten we went out into the garden at the appropriate hour and banged pots and pans together. It was cold, but it would have seemed against the spirit of the thing to don coats and gloves, so we stood their watching our breath mist before us, feeling the sting of cold on our exposed throats while our noses and fingers chilled throughly and breathed in the sharp wet scent of mulching leaves under the snow and the tang of nearby spruces. None of that, not even our blue lips and fingers stopped us from taking pains to ensure dark-haired Poppy was the first of us back into the house. This is supposed to secure luck, and as we need all the luck we can get at the moment, none of us was inclined to argue the point with Mara, even had we thought we could win._

 _When we were allowed back in it held all the satisfaction of something well-earned and fought for. Do you think there is there a nicer feeling than coming back into the warm after being frozen by the crispness of outside, mums? I don't. We had ice melting in our hair and snow on our tongues but my limbs glowed as warmth came flooding back into them. Poppy made us hot chocolate to chase away the worst of the cold and if it was thinner than it might have been in another life that didn't stop it settling in my insides like a rich liquid blanket, and thawing me. We took it into the sitting room to drink by the fire and for a long time after that sat up telling one another goblin-stories, so that the sky was grey with dawn before we kissed each other goodnight. I should tell you that we won't make a habit of it, but if the size and length of Clarissa is anything to go by, I may well find myself reading well into the small hours this term, to say nothing of writing. I shouldn't worry though, Mara's been doing just that for years now and never seems the worse for it. _

_While I think of it, did you mind very much, mums, our coming away early? I know Di and I said it was all to do with wanting to get to grips with this term's syllabus –and you'll gather from the conversation with Peter that I've been doing just that –but something about the look you gave me as we parted said you guessed it was more than that. Would that I had your ability to survive weeks, even months of those empty places at table. Write to me and tell me how you do it? I feel disloyal saying it was a relief to come back to a full table, but mums, it_ _was_ _. Poppy ran to meet us in the lane, Pilgrim nearly killed us trying to ascend the stairs with our cases, and Mara had foisted tea upon us before he succeeded in the attempt Then we were all sitting around the table trading news of our holidays, shaping the rota for the kitchen over the next term and grousing about impending coursework. It was such a relief to be able to laugh and tease each other again that I thought I'd cry from the shock of it. Then Pilgrim overturned a milk jug in his determination to settle on Mara's knee and I ended by laughing instead. The next minute the others were pestering me for one of my economies –and this admission seems the height of disloyalty to you and dad –I felt the most myself I had since going away._

 _Was Patty's Place like that to you? Was Anne of the Island more Anne-ish than the Anne of Green Gables or Avonlea, and was the one that came after at Four Winds still more of you? I can't imagine you as anything less than yourself, but this last holiday I tried to join wee Spider in Rainbow Valley and felt so pinched and out-of-place that I began to wonder if it was only I that felt that way. I resolved it by strategically retreating to the garret, where I lost an hour reacquainting myself with that old spinning wheel of grandmother Blythe's. It was a bad hour –I kept treating it like auntie Phil's castle wheel –but I felt better for it, and was further comforted by the knowledge that Spider had seemed to preoccupied with Jims's latest bout of croup to notice much. (For which, by the by, if Rilla will accept non-Morgan sources of advice, Di recommends a concoction of camomile and honey, though Faith argues for lobelia tea.)_

 _They're leaving now, our little clan of Red Cross recruits. I know even from the lofty height of the first storey because someone has left the front door open and the cold air is rushing up the stair and circling my feet. So is the sound of their going, any number of bright gladsome shouts bidding us all a goodnight and wishing us well until the next time. I wanted to tell you about Di's latest theory on the meaning of Wordsworth's Prelude, but either she'll have to tell you herself or it will have to keep until my next letter, because I ought to go down and say my goodbyes too. Besides, I want to be able to tell you what sort of a goodbye Poppy gives to Peter-who-is-only-a-good-friend._

 _Find enclosed a kiss for now and a spare one for emergencies,_

 _With love,_

 _Nan_

 _P.S. I have discovered from Miss Lacey that the names of the porcelain dachshunds are Augie (who sits on the left) and Buffy (right). As Di says, one presumes Buffy to be short for Elizabeth, but the significance of Augie –never mind its origin –has us all guessing._


	11. Chapter 11

As February stood poised on the brink of March, Mara woke early to find the grey and the murk of winter had been pierced by a sea of colour that played across the tower room windows like the insubstantial shawl of a theatre-going woman. She dressed by green light, and slipped out of the house on a prayer, here dodging the step that squeaked, there anticipating the death-trap of Pilgrim's sleek black tail, rendered invisible even by the faerie-light of the sky, there again eeling out the door before it opened wide enough to creak.

Poppy was sitting in the shelter of the sycamores, her face inscrutable as she watched the play of the lights across the sky. At once vivid and delicate they looked to Mara like gossamer curtains for heaven. To Poppy she said, 'you look like a selkie homesick for water.'

'Can't do,' said Poppy, never turning her head and evincing exactly no surprise at neither declaration nor Mara's appearance, 'I can't swim for toffee.'

When Poppy laughed it was the soft, warm sound of a rose on the wind, and it left the feeling of the evening, the church-heaviness and closeness undiminished.

'Mum says if you lie on your back and whistle, they dance for you,' said Poppy still with her eyes fixed on the Aurora overhead. It had dissolved into a blue that was almost white, visible now as a long undulating ribbon that twined through the branches of the sycamores as the warp to some celestial loom.

'Does it work?'

'I've never tried,' said Poppy. 'I can't whistle.'

'Oh, well if that's all.'

Mara lay back in the grass, the gems of frost notwithstanding, and cupping her head in her hands whistled through her teeth soft and low.

'I might be mistaken for a selkie,' said Poppy warmly, 'but if ever you looked like a witch, _mo caomhnach_ , you do now, with the light on you to bring out the red in your hair. It's all gold and honey as a rule, but it isn't now. If Miss Blake could see you no doubt she'd get a proper fright. Aren't you cold like that?'

'You are,' said Mara, and unclasped her cloak, spreading it so that Poppy could nestle beside her.

Poppy did, burrowing with all the efficacy of the youngest of the children back in Halifax, her feet coming to ground behind Mara's knees in the way she had long since come to expect of Tam's eldest boy. They lay there quietly, watching the curtain of the sky as it washed green, blue and then red for a time, before Mara picked up the thread of the whistling again. Soft, low and long, and the wave of light ebbed and flowed like water, reaching almost to the earth before curling inward and upward into the heavens, leaving behind the deep black of pre-dawn. It did look like dancing, Poppy's mother had been right. Down, and up and across like a complicated reel they swooped. Then they parted and for a terrifying moment Mara thought she saw the ghost of a tanned, curly-haired lad with broad hands and eyes greener than ever in the light. Only it couldn't be a ghost, because the bearer of those eyes had written to her only the other day, a jaunty, teasing excuse of a letter full of hints about what she was to send for his birthday.

'You aren't supposed to be here,' she said to the fetch, and it went but left her shivering.

'I should have thought,' said Poppy, 'you'll take a chill,' and she began to straighten her limbs into sitting, the wool of the cloak shifting with her movement. There was a crunch and a bristling as she resettled on the grass, shielding her neck and torso from the cold with her knees.

'It isn't that,' said Mara, the protest sounding thin as the air they exhaled. 'I didn't mean _you_ Mouse,' with rather more conviction. Even so, it was easier to acquiesce in the affair of the cloak than to try and account for how it was that at four in the morning she was seeing ghosts of the living. Some of it must have showed on her face though, because Poppy's hand alighted like a benediction on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

'No?' Poppy's eyes had rounded owlishly, Mara saw when she turned her head, _what did you see_ unspoken but almost visible between them, shimmering green and blue like the sky, sharp and clear-scented as the musk of the winter cold. Poppy didn't press though. Instead, she rocked into a crouch on the balls of her feet and extended an arm to help Mara up. The other was swinging upward in an arc meant, Mara supposed, to restore blood to whichever finger had gone numb with weather this time. When Poppy lost her balance she brought Mara with her, and they fell onto the grass chilled but laughing, and mercifully free of ghosts.

'Come on,' said Poppy, scrabbling up onto her knees, 'the world's not so thin inside. We can watch them from the kitchen window the warmer for a cup of cocoa. I'll make it.'

Somehow though, it was Mara who made the cocoa, deftly nudging Poppy out of the way and sending her to root out blankets from the sitting room, and the thrall of the lights never diminished for the separation of glass and the ivy-walled house.

Perhaps it was the ripple of them across Poppy's face, or the strangeness of boiling the milk in the dark, or the fact that they never progressed to speaking above a whisper, but Poppy's assertion that 'It was mum's grandfather that taught her the way to make them dance like that,' was every bit as unearthly as had been their vigil under the sycamores.

'When was this?' said Mara, handing her a cherry-blossom mug, and inhaling deeply the smell of hot, boiled milk to reground herself.

'Oh ages ago,' said Poppy, with a vigorous wave of her hand with its still-bloodless finger. 'Mum grew up in the North, proper end-of-the-world north, with ice and snow and short days. They were always looking through the veil into heaven the way she tells it. There aren't –I don't think –many things she missed, coming away on a wish with dad from the ends of the earth to try at farming, but she missed the sky lit like a Roman Candle for all to see. I guess I would too, if it's as heartbreakingly lovely as this always.'

'Mm,' said Mara, considering. Then she laughed, the sprightly, glistering sound of a leaping trout and pulled at an escape strand of Poppy's hair.

'A selkie after all then,' she said, 'isn't that where they come from? Out of the water into the ends of the earth?'

'Not a bit,' said Poppy robustly, 'that's no more true of me than there is faerie in you.'

The cocoa was seeping through them by then, cutting through the residual chill of the outside air, downy and warm as it slid down Mara's throat. She looked away from the window to smile at Poppy and in a heartbeat the lights had gone, bleeding seamlessly into sunrise, and the girls' laughter when it came was gentle and golden as a cloud.

They didn't see the lights again. March rushed in more like a stampeding elephant than a lion, and what with Faith being forcibly appointed to head the college Red Cross despite protestations that she couldn't bear its internal politics, Poppy's slow and sweetly unaware emersion into a romance, and Mara's own submergence into the world of _The Tempest_ as the performance loomed ever nearer, no one seemed to notice the lamblike gambol that heralded April with its promises of spring, buds and that unheard of thing –mild weather. Add to this Faith's everlasting wrangling with the nuances of modern languages, Poppy's attempts to solve military quandaries by way of impossible things called vectors, all while Nan and Di debated whether a 16-line sonnet could be called a sonnet or was George Meredith being overly clever, they were into April and out again before anyone had had time to stop to breathe.

Mara broke the surface of this fugue-like term in May only to come head-to-head with the Monstrosity. It had been brought to the house by Miss Lacey's hitherto unsuspected nephew sometime between Easter and the submission of the twins' solutions to the George Meredith question, and Mara had never stopped thinking of it in anything except capital letters. At the time manners and the pressing need to run to a rehearsal had stopped Mara saying anything about the introduction of the Monstrosity into the house, and prevented her also from salvaging the trustworthy shears that he had thought to take with him, thereby saving the girls their disposal.

'I trusted those,' said Mara darkly to Poppy faced with this revelation.

'Mm,' said Poppy. 'Well. Yes. I quite see that. These –this? –is meant to do their job better.'

Mara had been too tired to argue. Now she circled a mass of cable and teeth warily, and wondered how the menacing thing was supposed to aide in the pruning of the sycamores.

'You could leave it,' said Di, who looked as doubtful as Mara felt. 'We could send for the nephew to come do this –or ask Peter next time he's round. I bet he'd do it.'

'Almost certainly Peter would do it,' said Mara, rubbing her nose in frustration, 'and when the demonic thing did him some grievous injury, I'd have that on my conscience. Anyway, if I _don't_ do it, I have to think about exams. Whereas this way I can feel productive without plunging headfirst into revision.'

Di shook her head, but she was smiling. 'Have it your own way then,' she said as she disappeared back into Swallowgate, as having no such stalwart distraction, she went to her own revision.

Gingerly Mara began to untangle the cables. _Support it at both ends_ , the nephew had said, which left her with a worrying feeling that she was meant to stand snared in the middle of the Monstrosity as a fly in a spider's web. _I think I'd rather the spider_ , Mara thought with another look at the teeth of the monstrosity _at least it draws blood cleanly_.

For the first time in what felt an age she succeeded at looking away from the Monstrosity with its jagged teeth and at the sycamores in want of pruning. No, they wouldn't keep any longer. It wasn't only lombardies that grew ragged when neglected.

' _I have a garden all my own_ ,' she murmured to the menace of a machine and the chorus of swallows that had come down from the eaves to watch, ' _That so with roses overgrown_ –except that it's not roses that are the trouble. I could stomach the bite of a few prickles.'

It wasn't the pinprick bite of thorns when it came, either. After half an hour of galvanising the fiendish thing into doing –approximately – what she wanted, it turned sharply and unexpectedly outward, its teeth snagging the seam of her sleeve and cutting through it into the skin of her arm. That wasn't wholly unexpected by Mara, give a thing enough complexity and it begins to have a mind of its own and thoughts of being in charge. What _was_ unlooked for was the savagery of it as it tried to cleave her arm in two, or near enough as made no difference. Though fractionally too long letting the Monstrosity go, Mara wasted no time in screaming. This brought the others teaming from the house, Faith first trailing sewing like an extra limb, as she was wrenched out of the window seat by the sound, then Di, cream-coloured but grimly knowing. Poppy and Nan were half a pace behind, moving with all the slow compulsion of people with a horror of blood and an inability to avert their eyes.

'What happened? What did it _do_?' Poppy asked, clutching at a stitch in her side.

'That Caliban of an instrument attacked me,' said Mara, attempting simultaneously to nod at it and staunch the bleeding from her arm.

'I see that,' said Faith dryly. Deftly she took Mara's arm in hand and began to prod with curious and gentle fingers.

'I _think_ ,' said Faith, sucking air through her front teeth, 'it looks worse than it is. I mean nothing feels broken, and it's stopped short of cutting anything vital.'

She let go of Mara's arm in favour of shredding her sewing, which proved to be a half basted sheet, into long thin strips and binding them around Mara's arm.

'Di, you don't happen to have a curved needle spare, do you? You know, the kind you might take to emboss a footstool or something? It's not exactly to purpose, but it's better than nothing.'

Di went without a word, Poppy on her heels to boil water, leaving Nan to flap her hands helplessly in an effort to articulate her distress.

'You don't think a doctor would be a better idea?'

'Do you know who ours is then? I never found out and I thought between running to ask Ruthie, and running _again_ to fetch whoever it is, and then coming _back_ –'

'No, you're right, of course,' said Nan soothingly. 'Years of sending for dad –call it instinct or habit or something. What can I do?'

'Tell one of your Lord Harrington stories,' said Faith. 'It might take some of the sting out of this.'

'I don't suppose it can hurt much more than it does,' said Mara, half-rising. Faith but a hand to her chest and pushed her so that she was flat on the ground again.

'Tell me that afterwards, hm?' and improbable as it was, they exchanged smiles.

Di reappeared, needle like a fishhook in hand. Poppy set a pot of steaming water at Faith's sideand retreated to kneel at Mara's head. Her hands as they smoothed hair away from Mara's eyes were cool with insufficient blood.

Somewhere nearby Nan had taken up a story about Lord Harrington and a holiday by the sea he had sent his mother on, only to follow her when a bloody corpse had washed up on the beach. Under different circumstances, Mara might have teased Nan about her reworking of reality into fiction, as the hot metallic smell of blood mixed with the green scent of spring. As it was Mara was distracted by the first pinprick of the needle, searing from the heat of the water, and with a sting that began like a wasp's and worsened. Her eyes spasmed shut against the shock of it, and she lost all track of Nan's story, much more so of its mirroring of reality. She half-thought from something Poppy said that she must have gone white with the pain of it. Little wonder if she had, Mara thought, counting the heartbeats behind her eyelids, feeling them in her stomach and wrists; the ball of pain inflicted by the supposed garden tool was marching down her arm like a white-hot poker. It blossomed into a ball of light somewhere around the join between elbow and forearm, and the next thing Mara remembered clearly was the tension and torque of cotton as Faith rewound the bandages.

'I'm sorry about your sewing,' she said, eyes still squeezed shut.

'My –oh,' Faith laughed. 'Never mind that, the soldiers will do. Whatever the Government of Canada thinks, we're not the only women in the world basting sheets for them. You'll do too, _mo caomhnach_ , come on.'

That brought Mara's eyes open with a jolt. She caught first the look of owlish surprise stamped on Poppy's grey eyes, and then the amusement in Faith's, missing entirely Faith's arm extended in invitation.

'I make a degree of learning languages,' said Faith, her voice rippling with mirth, 'and you think I haven't picked up the odd word after hearing the two of you chattering like birds late into an evening? Did I get that right?' This last as an afterthought.

Poppy laughed. 'Yes,' she said, simultaneously to Mara's admission, 'I hadn't thought about it at all.'

Cautiously Mara pushed herself into a sitting position and bent her injured arm experimentally. She experienced a return of the hot poker sensation, but it was short, sharp and clean this time.

'Whatever you've done,' she said to Faith, touching the bandages with her fingers, 'it's worked.'

'I should hope so. Now,' nosing the monstrosity that had attacked Mara in the first place with a wary toe, 'who can think of a good –also safe –way of putting this thing out of its misery? Nothing short of a casting out of demons will convince me it's fit for purpose ever again, and Presbyterians don't go in for that sort of thing.'

Then, as she flung the boiling water over onto next door's lawn in an effort to dispose of it and with any luck kill the intruding weeds, 'but don't do it again, will you? My heart was in my mouth mending that tear.'

' _Yours_ was!' said Mara with assumed indignation. But then she threaded her good arm through Faith's and they came back into the house laughing.

Exams came and went and the exhalation of the year came with _The Tempest_. The convocation hall had been transformed into Prospero's island and from the wings Mara watched the arrival of the others. She had made no effort to discourage them coming this year, and sure enough they appeared a good quarter hour before the curtain, Ruthie comfortably amongst them, hatted, gloved and dressed for an evening in high society. In the part of Mara's brain not preoccupied with running cues and lines she hoped obliquely that Di had thought to take photos again. It would be nice if someday she could look back at the evidence of their obvious enjoyment of her performances. Not vanity _exactly_ , only something to buoy her against the inevitable storms of the world outside Redmond.

'You must be glad of them,' said the young woman playing Caliban, appearing at her elbow.

'Very,' said Mara and meant it.

Afterwards she knew they would descend on her in a glad rush, and when it was all over they would cosset her and conjure some idyll of a day, the more enjoyable for being hard-won. There would likely be tea, and a story or two from Nan, Faith would tease and Poppy would chatter and Di would lay out the pictures –if there were any –with enthusiasm, and Mara would know that whatever was wrong with the world, in their own haven of an Everywhere all was well, was right.


	12. Chapter 12

It was the kind of balmy September day when the girls who pinned hopes had taken their work into the garden in the name of change and progress both, and accordingly had looked up as the sun was setting to realise they had all worked through dinner and could not be bothered to cook anything elaborate. Mara being the most used to losing meals to her work, offered to eschew the rota and cook supper, a proposition no one had the energy to argue with. Di, with Faith, Nan and Poppy lingered outside in the thickening shade of the sycamores, listening to the swallows singing their autumnal goodbyes and trying to ignore the growing smell of supper as it drifted out the open kitchen window.

It was nothing fancy, was Mara's warning, only sausage and mash with the everlasting turnips and broad beans, with the odd piece of grilled tomato for variety. But the mash was thick with cream –an unlooked for bounty –and the sausages well-flavoured with garlic, onions and mace, and wrapped in bacon for good measure, and the girls who pinned hopes fell upon it gladly and silently, which is why they heard first the clatter of the horse and then the rap at the door.

The first time it came it was a skittering sound like a stone striking a tree, an ice pellet dropping out of the sky. The second knock was surer, the soft _thwump_ of an apple falling off the bough. The whicker of the horse though, that was pronounced. Poppy's ears caught it and actually twitched with something like excitement.

They were warm with sun, sleepy from the food, and might have let the visitor go thinking them not at home if there hadn't come a noise like a thunderbolt and then a familiar voice –to the twins and Faith anyway –expressing darkly the opinion that he realised the station-master had warned him that the horse was an ill tempered animal, but really, this was a bit much.

' _Dad_!' said Di and Nan in chorus, and ran for the door before there was time to speculate as to what had brought him to their doorstep at such an odd hour with no warning whatever.

It was Di who answered the door, narrowly jostling Nan out of the way. Her fist thought was that her father looked not old exactly but grey. The next minute she forgot, because he had gathered them both too him and he smelled so reassuringly of travel, of sleep and grit and coal over all the usual smells of coffee, camphor and lye that normalcy came flooding back like blood. Probably some friend dating back to Cooper Prize days had summoned him for a second opinion and he had seized the chance to surprise them. And if he had, no wonder he looked grey. He always did after a long day of work.

That was in the hallway, which was dim. In the better light of the sitting room Dr. Blythe looked down at them to the letter, tilting his daughters' chins, one in each hand, pressing cheeks and foreheads, gauging the brightness of their eyes.

'Are you well?' he said. 'You're working too hard, of course, but that's inevitable, knowing you two.'

There was almost a laugh there, a hesitation that didn't quite grow into a smile. That was the first uneasy thing. But he was still making a study of their faces, still not quite out of a working mindset. Di half-expected him to any minute click thumb and forefinger against her elbow and measure how fast her arm jerked its response.

'You had a pleasant summer?' He said instead, letting go Di's chin and bringing his hand round to the base of her neck, where he began to unknit assorted knots and kinks. 'Lots of socks knitted, sheets basted?'

Di laughed, and Nan did too as they assured him that they had and Gilbert nodded –a bit mechanically perhaps?

'Good,' he said, 'that's good,' but it was the doctor speaking, not her father. That was the second uneasy thing. He was leading them over to the squashy sofa, the one that tended to swallow its occupants. Nothing unusual in that though, Di reasoned, it was natural that he should want to talk sitting down. Less natural was his voice when he began, thick like molasses and slow. That was the third uneasy thing, and cold bloomed like rosebuds down Di's spine as she recognised it for the voice he used to inform patients' relatives of a death. But he was using it on her, on Nan, and that meant…

'I wanted to tell you…'Vaguely Di was aware of the other girls melting out of the room, of Poppy, apron full of apples going to see to the horse, Mara citing some last-minute tutorial preparation with a group of friends and following Poppy; Faith didn't go out of the house, but she did go upstairs murmuring about needing to finish a letter to her sister, perhaps Dr. Blythe wouldn't mind carrying it back…? and she was gone.

A thick fog had descended around Di, heavy and faintly grey like her father. Not grey, lilac-coloured maybe. On the dinning table Pilgrim was making short work of the abandoned feast, jealously guarding a piece of bacon as he devoured it.

'Walter,' Di heard as one submerged in water '…Fleurs-Courcelette…'

Around them the house slowed down, the chime of the clock, the setting sun, the spiced scent of the sausages. Faintly, through some neglected window came the lilt of Mara's voice, soft and questioning to Poppy, 'Did you grow up with horses then?'

Poppy laughed, said, 'Didn't I tell you what kind of a farm ours was?'

Mara's turn to laugh, then, afterwards, 'Mouse, if I knew, would I have asked?'

For a moment Di hated them because Walter was dead and they could still see the humour and the poetry in life, still had energy to pour into things like friendships. Surely that had died with Walter?

Across her, on the other side of their father, Nan was trying to string together something like a coherent response.

'Mumsie,' said Nan retreating to childishness, and it came out a question. 'Is she…'

'At home,' said Gilbert, and Di thought he might have smoothed Nan's hair out of her eyes. He was holding them again, cradled one in each arm as if they were still the 'little girls' of Ingleside, as if Rilla had never displaced them from the nursery. Without realising she did it, Di balled her limbs up tight and burrowed as close to her father as she could. She could still smell the spice of the sausage, and what supper they had managed to finish writhed uneasily in her stomach, could feel the vibration of his sternum as he spoke.

'Susan's with her, and Rilla.'

Abstractly, Di thought that this was good, if there were still good things in a world that did not have Walter. She closed her eyes tight, little fluttering fists against her father's chest, and tried to will the evening undone, counted to ten and opened her eyes buoyed on the prayer that she would find the world thereafter still as fresh and golden as when they broke their work for supper.

'I couldn't tell you over the 'phone,' he was saying when Di emerged long enough from that weird underwater haven of unreality to listen to her father again.

'Just as well,' said Nan drowsily, 'the house hasn't got a 'phone. I don't suppose a letter…'

'No, no,' said Gilbert, and he was himself then, not the doctor, 'I couldn't have done that. I had to tell you in person. Someone did.'

It was all too much; the spiced sausage, long since reduced to a cold knot in Di's stomach lurched with sudden purpose. She bolted into the garden and vomited into the shade of the sycamore trees. Her throat stung wit the acid taste of it, and she reached for a handkerchief by reflex, found she didn't have one and went to wipe her mouth on her sleeve only to find her hand full of embossed linen.

'Not Jem then,' said Mara, her hands full of Di's tumbled hair where she held it back from her face.

'No. Not Jem.' Di was not sure by what unwritten law Mara knew that to invoke Walter's name was to make it real, but was devoutly grateful she _did_ know it.

'Faith will be relieved,' said Di with effort.

'I don't know about relieved, but she'll still have breath maybe. All yours has escaped you. Come into the warm, _a leannan_ , you're cold.'

Di didn't argue. What energy she had was gone into preserving the fog of unreality, lilac-coloured and safe. She was obliquely aware of Mara letting go her hair and cradling her elbow, of being led back into the house and up the stairs. Dimly she took in the prickle of the blanket Mara wrapped around her, the way it scratched the back of her neck. All that was incidental. The vital thing was not to say what had happened. If she didn't say it then it hadn't happened and it was all a terrible, horrible misunderstanding.

'Your hands are cold too,' was the first distinct thing Di said as Mara sat chaffing her hands into life. She wasn't aware of the blood having gone out of them, but supposed it must have happened sometime between answering the door and running out into the garden.

'Mm,' said Mara. 'I didn't think to take gloves. Have a drink of this, you'll feel better for it.' Mara released Di's hands and nudged a glass of water in her direction.

'I can't.' That was the second distinct thing Di remembered saying.

'You must.'

Di picked up the glass, but finding it too heavy and her hands too clumsy, let Mara take it from her.

'Here, _mo caomhnach,_ shall I do it?'

Di didn't answer, but didn't resist when Mara administered what proved to be honey-water in small and frequent sips, tilting Di's head to help her swallow, as if she were a child, and always murmuring softly a stream of that Gaelic that soothed Pilgrim.

'What does it mean?' said Di, pulling the prickly blanket around her and closing her eyes.

'Some of it's only what I say to the little ones at home when I'm feeding them. Some of it's a prayer.'

'Who for?'

Mara set the glass down and waved a hand in the direction of the windows, where the swallows were now singing Walter a requiem all unknowing. 'The living the dead. All this.' Another gesture of Mara's hand, this one encompassing at once their island of subaqueous, murky present and the world at large.

'Oh,' said Di, feeling this inadequate, feeling no words would ever be adequate to the cause again, but finding her body was deriving energy from the honey-water in spite of itself, 'I thought it might be a poem. It had the shape of one…and you always seem to have one at your fingertips.'

'Mm. I thought maybe you wouldn't want one.'

'No,' said Di, shrinking under the bristled blanket.

'Well then. Sleep, _a charaid_.'

Di supposed she must have slept, at least a little, because the next time she surfaced from that watery lilac safe-place, Nan was curled up next to her, the bite of the blanket notwithstanding. Di opened her eyes and saw her there, like a cat with her head nestled against the crook of her elbow, and thought Nan's hair, so nut brown and glossy, looked lighter than usual. It occurred to her to wonder if one could turn not white with grief but only pale, if that was what she was seeing in Nan, and if it were, did Nan see it in her too? Was her hair less red? Once she would have welcomed the idea, now she found she couldn't bear it. Walter had loved the red of her hair, had called it burnished and golden, had quoted Browning to her in defence of it. _This coiled hair on your head unroll'd_ he had said, unpinning it to great effect in the summer sun, _fell down like a gorgeous snake_ , that was it. Would he still have said that of her, or had that gone from her too? There were no words to ask. They floated coyly on the wrong side of the lilac-soft place. No matter, Nan had found the words, was clutching them close in talisman against further evil, no doubt.

'What I wish most in the world,' said Nan softly, 'is that tomorrow you and I will both wake up and find this has all been a nightmare.'

It wasn't. When Di came downstairs early the next morning, still wrapped in the lilac-and-water shroud of self-preservation, the room still smelled heavily of spiced sausage, garlic, of mace, onions and grief.

* * *

 _For those of you taking a brace against the inevitable and hoping I'd manage another chapter before the death of Walter, my apologies. I did try, but it only seemed to hold up the plot. Thanks as ever to all of you taking the time to read and/or review._


	13. Chapter 13

Faith sat down on the bed gingerly. Di had wound herself up tight into a ball, her fingers twined around the bedspread leaving it mussed.

'May I?' said Faith belatedly, laying a hand with butterfly-wariness on Di's shoulder.

'No,' said Di into the bed. 'I've made a cosy, safe haven of a lilac-coloured place for myself, and if I let you in it will vanish and it will all become real. I can't bear it if it becomes real.'

'Darling girl,' said Faith, rubbing cautiously at Di's back and wishing for all the world she had Rosemary's surety or Una's steadiness, or anything resembling the gentleness that came to those women so easily and apparently effortlessly. She was all breezy, blunt edges and it wasn't at all the thing for comforting a friend, but Nan couldn't do it –Nan was grieving too. She had taken her grief out of the house to be quietly contained under the sycamores where the last of the swallows that the house was named for were piping. Poppy had gone to her, cheery practical Poppy who knew what to do when confronted with a mass of sobbing, trembling friend, and that was a good thing. Poppy would look after Nan, and Faith must do her best to see to Di so that the twins could look after each other. They needed that, Faith thought, perhaps more than anything else.

'Darling girl, I know. And it will hurt –horribly –but don't you think it will be a clean sort of hurt, that that might be better than…'and then there was Di sobbing in her arms and Faith was stroking her glossy red hair, reduced to nothing but shushing noises.

'There,' she said weakly, 'hush, that's better, isn't it? It's right to cry…'she talked on, afraid of the silence lest it swallow them, sure she was saying all the wrong things, not at all sure what to say to the shaking, sobbing girl with her head on her lap.

They sat like that for what felt an eternity, and was, to judge by the sun. Dimly Faith registered the fairy-tread of Mara returning, the thunk of her satchel below them in the hall, the first quarter-hour. Then there was the whine and sigh of the back door as the catch clicked and resettled. That would be Nan and Poppy coming in from the garden –the second quarter hour? Perhaps. There was clattering and bustling that would be the girls making and settling down to tea, Faith supposed. She felt her stomach turn over deep inside her, and was overcome with a wish to join them as it came home to her that comforting like this was hungry work. She thought wistfully of Poppy's ruddy optimism, Mara's blended whimsy and starightforwardness, even Nan's porcelain fragility, and knew she must not go down, the growing ache in her stomach notwithstanding. She was needed here, and if she didn't quite know what to do, she was glad of the purpose she felt. The sun was sunk low and golden; it must have been streaming Poppy's eyes, Nan's too, sitting out under those sycamores. Sensible of them to come in. Nearby Pilgrim was heard to rustle and nose his way through the potted ferns on the tower room stairs. What did that mark? The passing of an hour? A sun-spot had moved, clearly, and he would be plodding downstairs to see if the window seat was vacant, which it almost certainly was in light of Faith being perched instead on the edge of Di's bed, the lone star quilt rumpled, Di's red hair streaming over her lap like a sunset.

It was at last the scent of garlic as someone crushed it, rising up through the stairs that brought Di out of herself at last.

'It isn't Mara's night to cook,' was the first distinct thing she said, pink and puffy-eyed as she was.

'Go splash cold water on your face,' said Faith as if this were the most obvious answer, 'and take over from her if you like, though I don't suppose the rota's written in stone. Anyway, how can you tell it's Mara?'

Di, who was scrubbing at her eyes with her fists, offered Faith something that was trying to be a smile. 'Mara's the only one of us with a knack for crushing garlic,' she said.

They were into grey October by the time Ruthie called. There had been talk of Nan and Di returning to Ingleside with Gilbert but it had come to nothing. For three days they clung to one another for ballast, the girls agonising alternately over their mother, their baby sister and their courses while Dr. Blythe squeezed, cuddled and nursed and said with firmness that they must take no one into consideration but themselves. In the end, after much late-night whispering that hinted strongly to Faith of lack of sleep, the argument that carried the day was Nan's beseeching, _but what could we possibly do?_

Faith, lying in the corner room snugged architecturally against theirs, had been groggily aware of thinking _not much_. She had then lain awake feeling guilty that she should be relieved at having them close. Poppy might have grown to be the sister of her heart, but the twins shared her history, were woven into the fabric of her life too closely to be untangled. If they went, she would have to go too, in spite of a conviction she would be intruding upon the collected grief of Ingleside, because the thought of the twins making that journey home, raw, vulnerable and grieving, and without anyone to anchor them to the world beyond their hurt was unthinkable. Could she help it, demanded the grateful part of Faith's conscience of the guilty half, if she had cleaved close to them in the absence of her own sister? Una was slipping away from her anyway. Not on purpose, never that, but she was all taken up with the running of the manse, looking after little Bruce, even the odd bit of work for Rilla's Junior Reds, and couldn't help it if she didn't know quite how to sound interested in the trials of irregular verbs, or exactly what questions to ask of Swallowgate. Di and Nan didn't have to think, it was their world too, and she needed them here –and perhaps, she had argued before drifting uneasily to sleep, they needed to be here too.

That was at any rate the argument they finally put to Dr. Blythe, coming down on the side of coursework, not because it was of greater import than the well-being of Ingleside, but because it offered a lifeline to normalcy, a routine to grasp at and tether them to reality. Accordingly they had sent their father away with well-wishes and kisses for the family and thrown themselves into work with such a vengeance that Poppy frowned and Mara, usually only dramatic on stage, actually wrung her hands over it. And then Ruthie called, little pixie-esque Ruthie with her pointed chin and her cropped hair, and it had begun to be all right again. At least, Faith began to think it might be.

It was Di that opened the door to her, Nan looming in the wings just behind her, wedged between the open door and the coat rack like an avenging angel waiting to pull her twin from the clutches of yet more dreadful news. There was no need. There was only Ruthie on the steps, mass of gold curls and trembling mouth as she said, and that uncertainly, 'I couldn't decide if I ought to come or not. I resolved to at once, when I heard, but as soon as I stepped outside I felt convinced I'd be intruding and I'd better not, so I kept away, but then I felt sure _that_ was all wrong too, and I've been swithering about it for weeks. I shall never forgive mama for gifting me her indecision. It's a vicious, paralyzing thing. I ought to have come before though to tell you –Walter was…'here too Ruthie seemed to hover indecisively. 'He was clever,' she said at last, then began to shiver with rain and cold, and if Faith –tucked cosily up in the window seat with Pilgrim at her feet for a hot water bottle–was guessing, something else.

'We shared a course,' elaborated Ruthie. It was then that Di had got her gently by the elbow and into the narrow entrance hall. Faith caught the old flicker of warmth in Di's eye that betrayed an idea, and suspected her of reaching the same conclusion as herself about Ruthie Blake. Indecision might be paralytic, but it didn't make a person look that stricken, Faith was certain.

'Come in then,' Di was saying. 'Come in and sit down, and I'll make us a cup of tea and we'll tell you –Nan and I –about Walter. You won't mind?' She sounded breakable, even childish, and Faith had half a mind to go to her and pull her over to the scrubbed pine table, to wrap her on cotton batting and make her a bowl of bread and milk. She'd make one for Ruthie while she was at it –do them both good. But already Di had vanished into the kitchen, leaving Nan to sit opposite Ruthie and hold her hands and make all those soft soothing noises, halfway between kisses and clucks usually practiced on cats.

Faith got up then, stiff with sitting and revision, and retreated to the sanctity of the room she shared with Poppy. That disgruntled Pilgrim, but she took exactly no notice and anyway, once he'd concluded that the three people at the kitchen table had no thought for him, he followed her and draped himself around her shoulders like a mottled black stole. So ensconced she went on with revision, and verbs in _–ir_ but her attention was only half on what she was doing. Faith wasn't trying to listen, not exactly, but the odd remembrance _would_ carry up the stairs and intrude on her conscience, pulling her back to the present.

 _…there were two trees there, he hung bells from them, did you ever see…_

 _…a great reader_ …that was Nan, from the cast of her voice, shimmery and bell-bright… _he spent a summer reading his way through Kipling. All of it, and aloud to us. His favourite was –Di, you'll remember, I can't_ , said with decision.

 _Kim_ _. His favourite was_ _Kim_ _. But he loved the scene from_ _Treasure Island_ _where Jim Hawkins hid in the apple-barrel next after it._

Faith crossed the room, shut the door –most of the way –and sat down again, meaning to write out the endings in – _ir_ with decision. She would write them in long columns, the kind that had once held up Rome, until she had them by rote.

 _Best ear for rhyme…_ that was Ruthie. Faith gave up the verbs as a bad job and shuffled the paper until she found one suitably unmarked for writing to Una. So it wasn't so thrifty as the pattern-paper Una wrote on, but Una didn't _need_ pattern-paper to sew, wonderfully needle-deft entity that she was, and Faith did.

 _Dear Una…_ she began and then promptly sat and stared at the paper. Where did one start? With Ruthie, descending on the doorstep a whirl of indecision and constricted feeling? Faith tried to picture that opening out _Ruthie came by –you remember, the dithery golden girl I told you about over the holiday and said struck me as coming from Faerie more than Patterson street? She finally made up her mind to call on the twins, trailing feelings like lace from the seams of her coat. I can't be certain of course, but if I were guessing, I think she may have loved…_ no, that would never do. She tried again, eschewing news of Ruthie for Swallowgate news this time. _We've been sewing –well what else –nothing but hopeless case gowns this month. Isn't that a demoralizing name? It makes my flesh creep. Nan doesn't like them much better, I know because she looked up from one the other day and said in a strangled voice, 'you don't suppose Jerry wore one of these after he was knocked over by the explosion at…'_

Faith shuddered. That was, if possible, worse. Stick to real-world news, why didn't she, the reports from the Somme, Romania, Isonzo, and maybe ask after Bruce. _He hasn't asked again about the murdered children has he_? Faith shook herself, unwittingly dislodging Pilgrim. He swiped at her neck and left it stinging but she never noticed. What was wrong with her that she could only write about ghoulishness this afternoon? Idly she spun her fountain pen between index and ring finger, and wondered what nice, wholesome things she could write about that weren't irregular verbs in – _ir_.

 _Series of sonnets to Rosamund_ , came Nan's voice, warm now with memory up the stair and under the door.

 _Jem found them and read them to us. We teased Walter for hours to find out who was behind them_ –still Nan, wrapped in golden reminiscence. _Of course he ever said_.

Then Di, with the tenor of one making a gift of a secret said _they were really about Faith of course._

That jarred her, blotted the paper and curtailed any thought of writing meaningfully to Una. Di had said it with the certainty of one who knew and the confidence that so did everyone else. Nan's exclamatory, _really –did he say so_ about summed up how she felt. It shouldn't have mattered. She didn't care –never had –for Walter like that. That had always been Jem, ever since they had first met over that trout feast in Rainbow Valley. Faith had looked at him and known. But when confronted with irregular French verbs, and the blank prospect of a letter to one's sister, one didn't expect to be ambushed by revelations about the loves of lately departed friends.

She was sitting quite still when Poppy came in, alerted only to her arrival by the chattering of the teacups that young woman bore, one in each hand.

'When did you come in? I missed you,' said Faith, thinking she must be stating the obvious, thinking too that Poppy must have nudged the door open necessarily with her elbow or else be possessed of a cunningly concealed third hand, and still feeling she had been punched hard in the gut.

'Dreaming like that? I don't wonder. I snuck past the others and nicked some of the tea. Nan said she thought you were about up here frantically working, so I brought you a cup too. Drink it before it goes cold?'

This last was so very like Una that Faith smiled. She took the teacup and sipped at it absentmindedly, the rich, round scent of it seeming to seep into her bones and warm her.

'We've run out of sugar,' said Poppy, plopping down on her bed and swinging her legs carelessly against the side. 'I'm sorry about it, you look like you need it. Have you had a shock? Faith have I said something wrong?'

Faith hadn't been aware of beginning to cry; she noticed it only when the salt taste of her tears mingled with the tea. Poppy fished in her blouse for a handkerchief and handed it over to her.

'A bit of a month for tears, isn't it?' she said ruefully.

'It isn't that. You made me think of home is all. Of my family.'

Poppy snaked her arms around Faith's neck, her head occupying the place a disgusted Pilgrim had lately vacated.

'You're fond of them, aren't you?'

'Yes. Mouse, are you afraid of ghosts, do you think?'

Poppy considered this. Faith didn't turn to look at her, but she could guess well enough that Poppy's eyes were wide and owlish with consideration.

'I don't know,' she said finally, resettling her chin on Faith's shoulder. ' Mara is, I know, but then she sets great stock by dreams. I wouldn't like to vouch for Nan and Di. Why, are you?'

'I don't know either. I think so. I mean I haven't been since Henry Warren's ghost turned out to be only a bed sheet –have I ever told you that story? –but I think perhaps it's returned.'

'Henry Warren?'

This time Faith did turn, giving one of Poppy's curls an affectionate tug as she did so. 'No, silly. The fear of ghosts.'

'Oh. Well drink your tea. It isn't cold yet and it might chase them away.'

'My word,' said Faith with a grin as she swallowed a mouthful of tea, 'but you and Una are cut from the same cloth. Tea's her panacea too. No don't stop,' seeing Poppy about to open her mouth in apology, 'it's comforting. I know,' suddenly inspired, 'tell me what you'd want to read about in a letter. I've been trying to write one home and keep drawing blanks.'

Poppy hummed in Faith's ear, the sound high and forward like the buzzing of a bee as she mulled the problem over.

'You can't go wrong with a cat,' she said at last. 'Write to her about Pilgrim. He brought Mara the last of Next Door's roses the other day by way of a gift, as well as an assortment of nettles she's turning into tea. It does something useful –lessens sore throats maybe? –that's the sort of detail your sister goes in for isn't it?'

'It's good for cramp,' said Faith promptly, 'and colds, aches too, and exactly the type of thing Una will want to read about. Mouse, you're a gem.'

'I'm not really. You only think I am and I haven't the heart to point out the rough patches to you when you have the grace to overlook them. Oh!' in a sudden burst of inspiration, 'and you might add in about _Much Ado about Nothing_ if you fall short. It's the drama class's play this year, Mara's leading.'

'Is she? Well if anyone was born under a merry star it was her.'

'Mm-hm. You can tell them that too. But drink your tea first. You're still all curds-and-whey and it doesn't suit you so well as your rose-spots.'

'Cheese coloured,' said Faith, and then laughed and laughed, at that, and poor bemused Poppy never understood what had caused it.


	14. Chapter 14

_I've been remiss lately in acknowledging your reviews and responses, but they are always valued and appreciated._

* * *

It was a very grey November. The flowers had been bludgeoned to death early in autumn by a gout of rain, and the roads had been washed practically to mud; no one had dared go out of Swallowgate shod in anything but gumboots for the last few weeks, and even then they returned pink-toed and sorely in need of hot bricks to rest them against.

Poppy, sitting Turk-style on the attic floor and diligently –if crookedly –sewing away at a hospital gown, looked up at Mara, who was for reasons of that good creature's own understanding, perched precariously on her desk.

'What are we going to do?' asked Poppy, before dropping her head and rubbing her neck to stave away cricks.

' _O that I were a man_ ,' was the unhelpful declamation flung at Poppy in answer.

'It was Hero I was conscripted for,' Poppy said tersely –or as tersely as Poppy could –'so don't look to me for the cues to that scene.'

'Were you really?' Mara wanted to know. Poppy waved an impatient hand.

'Never mind all that. What are we going to _do_?' She jerked her head in the direction of the attic stair for emphasis. 'And don't tell me,' she said as something of an afterthought, 'that you'll eat anyone's heart in the marketplace. It won't do a jot of good.'

Mara laughed; it was a rich, warm rare sound, the kind of sound the echoes of Swallowgate had forgotten of late and caught at hungrily. It was refreshing, and Poppy felt a rush of relief that in the sanctity of Mara's tower room they could tease and laugh without infringing on the grief of the others.

'We've never had to pretend before,' said Mara, cutting effortlessly to the heart of the trouble. 'Would it be better or worse, do you think, if we made a thing of Christmas this year?'

Poppy flailed her hands helplessly. 'Why do you think I came to _you_?' she said with such dramatic emphasis that Mara laughed again in spite of herself. Poppy ignored her.

'I've thought it all over six ways from Sunday, and if we don't do anything there will be nothing but dreichness –is that a word –and gloom. But if we _do_ make a thing of it, and no one feels like having a Christmas –'

'Then that will be dreicher –now that certainly isn't a word –and gloomier,' said Mara for her. 'I've thought of it too. I even went so far as to consider asking the Ruthie-object for an opinion, before determining she'd tell me to do both at once and gave that idea up as a bad job.'

That made Poppy laugh, she couldn't help herself. Ruthie's indecision _was_ maddening, she and Mara had often said so to one another.

'I suppose you could, seeing as she's deigned to call on the others now.'

'Mouse! How in the name of goodness did we ever get the idea you couldn't hold a grudge? You're better and quieter about it than anyone.'

'Oh well,' said Poppy deprecatingly, 'I don't suppose I'd had grudges to hold before. But Ruthie invariably ruffles you, and she kept well away from the twins when Walter died…'

'Faith has a sort of idea that might be partly to do with Ruthie having been in love with him.'

'Yes, she said to me too. I tend to agree with her.'

'And that doesn't soften you at all?' but there was a smile in Mara's voice, creeping cautiously to the edges of her mouth. It was sweet to gossip like this over the sewing, it had been too long since they had felt the indulgence of it. Walter's death had effortlessly swept so much levity out of the house. They didn't grudge the others any of it –it all made terrible, painful sense –but it felt good now and again to relax into older, happier habits. Poppy's smile in answer was equal parts sweetness and self-deprecation.

'No. Ruthie brings out all the prickly places in me. I can't help it. If it had been Ruthie's brother, Di would have gone, and gone at once.'

'Are they so close as that then?' If Mara had meant to pitch this evenly –a circumstance Poppy took leave to doubt given Mara's gift for acting –she fell woefully short.

'What do you know,' asked Poppy, briefly distracted.

'I don't.'

'You do or you wouldn't have said.'

'I'm only guessing –Mouse stop!'

Defeated, Poppy's fingers had found the tender parts of Mara's feet and she was now tickling her unmercifully. Reflexively, Mara tried to kick her away, but miscalculated and the girls fell on the floor laughing and clutching at one another until they ran out of breath, a tangled but happy heap of sewing and bruised limbs.

'You realise all of that advances us exactly nowhere about Christmas,' said Poppy breathlessly to the ceiling when they had subsided. 'Do we do anything, or no?'

'I was hoping you were building up to telling me, Mouse.' This was said with the air of one petitioning for an answer.

Poppy blinked owlishly, and effectively at Mara.

'All right, give me a minute to think…There's another brother, isn't there? Do you reckon we could get in touch…'

'Oh but that's an excellent idea,' said Poppy, sitting up with a jolt and clapping her hands delightedly. 'One of your best ideas, Mara.'

'Good,' said Mara. 'In that case shall we go down and –no don't look like that, I shan't let on if it's to be a surprise, don't worry –talk to them about Christmas, I was going to say. We can at the very least take a vote on how to observe it. Frankly, I'd sooner that than swither about it behind closed doors any longer.'

The consensus, once taken, was for letting Christmas go that year. Better, everyone felt to let the holiday pass by than try to force cheerfulness. All well and good, but it didn't stop Poppy putting by little Christmas mindings for the others, and noticing that they did it too. More than once she caught Faith scrutinizing her personal allowances with the glint in her eye that Poppy now knew meant Christmas, Nan took over the kitchen for two days together and would let no one near it, though the smells escaping it betrayed scents of ginger, almond and cloves. Di was knitting away determinedly, none of it war-work because the patterns were all wrong for that. Up in the attic, Mara was ostensibly committing Beatrice to memory –and she was, Poppy knew –but she was also carving away at a set of stamps for pressing butter **,** presumably meant for Nan in keeping with tradition. Poppy caught her at this when she came up to put the finishing touches on the plot they had shaped back in the drear days of November. Everything was, she thought with satisfaction, coming together nicely.

That was why on a cool, clear December day, as the sun was setting behind the sycamores, that the girls who pinned hopes retreated to the fireside for the evening, to exchange gifts over their Red Cross work, lack of Christmas decorations notwithstanding. Nan did indeed receive the butter stamps from Mara –handed to her casually while in the midst of pinning the seam of a dressing gown – to add to her increasing collection of homemade kitchen artefacts; she had herself baked niceties for all of them –not many perhaps, but enough –gingerbread cut from Mara's previous offering of cookie-cutters, little shortbread wreathes with candied bows, and a healthy quantity of oatcakes. They had come bundled into neat pouches, long since opened and spread out to be feasted on intermittently between seams, pins and stitches. There were berets all round from Di, who had done them skilfully in a moss stitch-and-shell weave Poppy was resolved to learn, to say nothing of colours well-suited to the recipients; rose for Nan, navy for Mara, red for Poppy and something halfway between red and brown for Faith that made her look glossy as and golden an Inca berry when she wore it. Faith had –as suspected –been to town for trinkets, well within slender means, for each of the girls, exchanged alongside pin- and needle-books. A little mouse-shaped box painted with red flowers that might at a stretch be poppies, was Poppy's treat. 'Well, I couldn't _not,_ ' said Faith laughingly when Poppy opened it, 'with a knick-knack that apt, could I, Mouse? And of course once I'd seen to you I couldn't leave the others out.'

She had found a book of speeches by Dryden for Mara, a sewing-box so small as to be pocket-sized for Di, and a fresh, lined notebook for Nan. It was done with no ceremony, or apology, but Poppy thought the spirit of the holiday was lurking in some atmospheric undercurrent in spite of their best efforts to suppress it.

Penetrating this amicable atmosphere came a knock on the brass knocker of the house, startling the winter birds and announcing an unexpected arrival. Sewing shifted, balls of wool drifted and gifts were dropped as the girls started at the sound of it. Only Pilgrim, beset with an injured paw, refused to so much as bat an eye. He had settled onto Mara's lap for a good sulk, and intended to stay there feeling sorry for himself until she abandoned her efforts at knitting socks and paid him suitable fealty.

'That will be your caller, Poppy,' said Faith mildly, evidently revelling in watching her friend turn red as her namesake.

'I shouldn't think so,' said Poppy, blushing furiously. 'I haven't got a caller. Besides, it isn't Peter's knock,' aid as the brass knocker clunked against the door again. Faith gave her a look wherein mingled equally amusement and unbelief and communicated quite wordlessly her wonderment that Poppy should know a thing like that and yet not be at least a _little_ keen on the person under discussion, all of which Poppy ignored.

'Di,' she said, without looking up from the cabled sock she was working, 'can you get it? You're furthest ahead in your sewing.'

Di went without fuss, almost sonambulantly, Nan trailing her like a shadow, wary apparently, lest the door or the thing beyond it swallow her sister. She had been doing it, Poppy had noticed, ever since that nice Dr. Blythe turned up at Swallowgate with news of their brother. She tried surreptitiously to catch Mara's eye, and while it worked, she had obviously not managed any kind of secrecy.

'You're plotting, you two,' said Faith, still mildly, 'can I know what about?'

Mara shrugged with a dramatist's poise. 'You'll see,' she said, brown eyes glowing warm as candles. Across in the hallway the door had opened to a burst of cold air and a triumphal shout.

'It _is_ you then,' someone was saying, and while Poppy was strongly inclined to think more followed, it was lost in the ebullient squealing of the Blythe twins.

' _Shirley_ ,' they said as one voice. 'What are you doing here –but it's good to see you –just think our little Nutkin **–'**

'I'm taller than you!' said that young man with good-natured indignation, 'and I haven't been 'Nutkin' to anyone in years.'

'The point still holds,' said Nan with resolution.

'I gathered it was the time of year when Walter used to look in on you lot –what was it he called you, girls who pinned hopes? – make sure you hadn't killed yourselves with work, and I thought he might like me to keep the tradition alive. I'm sorry I'm not him –you'll have been expecting him, I guess, without meaning too –and I must make a poor substitute.'

'Nonsense,' said Di stoutly, though she sounded to Poppy as if she'd had to steel herself to say it, 'it's a treat to see you. We don't hear near enough of you now you're away at Queens. A worse letter writer I don't know. Come in out of the cold, and bring –is that a case? What's that you've got with you?'

'Applewood,' said Shirley Blythe, and before he could manage another word there was another onrush of exclamations.

'Is it really?' Faith had flown to the hall to join them, trailing green wool behind her. 'Well bring it in, close the door and keep the cold _out_. We're settling for a long winter, can't you tell?'

Left to themselves, Poppy and Mara shared a pointed look.

'That's something like,' said Mara with satisfaction, her eyes crinkling. 'It's good to hear them sounding so well.' Burrowed into her lap and looking like a solemn black cushion, Pilgrim forgot his sulk and his injured paw to purr agreement.

'It was a good thought you had,' said Poppy, and took a fresh skein of wool to continue her sock.

They were rejoined in short order by Faith and the three Blythes, the last –and tallest –of them heavily burdened with the much-appreciated applewood.

'What made you think of it?' his sisters asked in a rare moment of twinish unity.

'Saw it at the station,' said Shirley, 'and remembered mum and the aunts had liked it for a fire when they were here. Thought you might too.' He shrugged, unburdening himself in a single gesture that sent wood clattering onto the floor and carpeted the flagstones with woodchips. 'I'm hoping it hasn't all been vanished by the time I go back,' he said, rubbing his shoulders to ease tension from them. 'I rather thought it might do for an offering to Ingleside this Christmas. What say? Is it a good thought?'

'A brilliant one,' said Nan, and smiled. Actually smiled. Poppy saw it and lowered her head over her knitting so as not to gloat. It was _good_ to feel her friends reviving again. The last term had passed in a mist of heavy, somnolent gloom. To see it lifting as Shirley Blythe built up the fire was beyond gratifying. It warmed Poppy to the core of her self.

When he had finished with the fire Shirley seemed to take the others in for the first time, and nodded to them genially. 'Let me see,' he said, sitting back on his heels and making what felt to Poppy a study of them, 'Poppy will be the sleek seal-like one with an eye for cables, and Mara will be the one with the goldenrod colouring and a look of elsewhere about her. And that,' he said with a nod to the black cat in Mara's lap, 'will be Pilgrim. Tell me,' this to the twins, 'is he a Jekyll or Hyde sort?'

'Definitely Jekyll,' said Nan, 'a very petable cat.'

Sensing himself central to the discussion, Pilgrim promptly remembered he was sulking and opened two aggrieved amber eyes and fixed them on Shirley.

'He doesn't look it,' he said mildly.

'No, well he shouldn't –he went after a porcupine the other evening and limped back this morning with a paw full of quills for his trouble. Even Poppy hasn't been able get him still enough to tend to them.'

'Did you now,' said Shirley Blythe, apparently to the cat. 'And you wouldn't let Poppy even look?'

'It's horses I can talk to,' Poppy felt it incumbent on her to say, 'not animals generally.' She had got the red and upraised gouges all along the inside of her arms in testament to this fact, and was presently grateful she had only that; what Pilgrim had meant to claw out were her eyes, or so it had seemed when he flew at her in a magnificent black-furred fury at eight o'clock that morning.

'It's Mara he cleaves to, not me.'

Poppy would not have said if pressed that Shirley had been listening over-close to this burst of self-dismissal; he was making indistinct noises possibly intended to be soothing, and inching towards the cat. This last caught his attention though.

'Is it then? I don't suppose,' with a nod to Mara, 'you'd get a hand on his neck? I shouldn't think he'd let me do it, but he might you. In case he bolts, you know.'

Poppy, still faintly reeling from the revelation that the Blythes were possessed of a brother who knew what a cable was when it wasn't affixed to a tram, watched bemusedly as Mara complied. So did Pilgrim. He sat on Mara's knee meek as a lamb and let Shirley prise out the quills and set them in the chipped saucer stamped in Swallowgate's famous cherry blossom pattern. Mara must have got it from the mantle in some acrobatic feet that defied logic; to Poppy, kneeling on the floor and by far the shortest of the girls who pinned hopes, the mantel looked many miles away. The retrieval of the chipped saucer aside though, Poppy wasn't sure what boggled her more, this burst of docility from Mara, who was waging a civilised territory war with Di over the kitchen and had been for years, or Pilgrim's acquiescence after his earlier coup on her forearm. She looked to Faith to see if she believed it, and smiled to catch her resolutely sewing a crooked seam into the hospital gown she was battling with. Then Faith looked up, and met Poppy's eye with two round caramel orbs, _we'll take this to pieces later_ , writ large in them.

'I'd have thought porcupines all out of season,' Shirley said to no one in particular.

'We all did,' said Mara. 'I think he must have rootled this one out of a burrow or something. He looked a sight when he came in with the milk.'

'I should think he would.'

'I'll put on tea,' said Poppy, feeling suddenly stifled by the closeness of the room. She wondered the others didn't feel it, the smoky smell of the applewood mingled with the sensation of being trapped in something thick and resinous.

'I'll help.' Faith cast the hospital gown from her without a backward glance and flew on Poppy's heels into the kitchen, where she lowered her golden head to Poppy's ear and hissed, 'I'm not dreaming it, am I? That really is Mara, sitting there mild as a kitten and placidly being told what to do?'

'I think so,' said Poppy, fussing over the teapot. The previous person to use it had left it sitting in the sink full of damp leaves. She scooped them out and emptied them out the window into the slush, grateful for the inrush of clear, cold air and the faint tang of spruce it carried with it.

'At least,' she amended, 'it looks like Mara. Well almost. She looks like a rose in a sunset –I've never seen her like that before.'

'No, I don't suppose we would have,' said Faith enigmatically, peaking through the kitchen into the living room where the operation on Pilgrim's paw continued apace. 'It's funny,' she said, retreating again, and watching as Poppy made up the tea, 'I'd have marked her for being of the too-wise-to-woo-peaceably sort, like Nan, wouldn't you?'

'I hadn't really thought,' said Poppy, filling a tray with tea things. 'Have we got any biscuits to offer? Or do you reckon we'd better offer Nan's Christmas baking? I know there's no cake, even the flourless sort because I went looking for some earlier when Peter was visiting but –hang on, you never mean to tell me that Mara's in love with him?'

'At the very least she's a fancy for him, don't you think so?'

Poppy abandoned the tea tray and went to the place Faith had lately occupied at the kitchen door. Pilgrim was stretched out lengthwise across Mara's lap, claws sheathed and –though it was hard to judge at a distance –apparently free of quills. Shirley still sat cross-legged at Mara's feet, talking by turns to her and his sisters, pausing occasionally to scratch Pilgrim's much-mangled ears.

'I'm not at all convinced it's all on her side you know,' said Poppy, returning dazedly to the tea tray.

'Are you not? Hmm.' Faith elbowed Poppy cautiously, mindful of the china and the scalding tea.

'Come on,' she said, edging ahead of Poppy to open the door, 'much easier to judge from close quarters.'


	15. Chapter 15

_Thank you as ever both to readers and/or reviewers of this story._

* * *

 _Anchorage,_

 _Halifax, N.S._

 _December 1916_

 _Dear Mums,_

 _Faith assures me that this letter is redundant, as you will either read it with me sitting at your feet or it and I shall both be stranded here until a boat is prepared to make the journey across to P. E. Island, but my conscience was resolved to prick me until I wrote to you. We are all well, mums, and safe. We got as far as the Halifax Harbour, and at that point Captain Roberts who has always seen us across before, looked darkly at the sky, gesticulated in the usual way and said that the storm we'd just had was bound straight for Prince Edward Island, he wasn't going anywhere near it's shore 'til it had blown over._

 _If he's right and it is the same storm, I can't say I blame him. Shirley only came up for a weekend and wound up staying a fortnight because the snow was so thick and blinding that you couldn't see the tip of your nose stepping out in it. His gift of the applewood to us turned out to be a godsend, as the snow came with a wind that knocked your breath out of your body and a sea-chill that got into your bones. You'll appreciate that in consequence of this we lost any number of hours to huddling by applewood fires, nursing hot drinks and listening to the wind whistle down the chimney and through the draughty places in Swallowgate. Sometimes we played Othello, but as Di and Faith are far and away the best at that and leave us mere amateurs leagues behind, mostly we talked._

 _We set out for Halifax all six of us together, but unlike us, Poppy_ _did_ _manage to catch her boat, so we said our goodbyes and, seeing no other solution, accepted Mara's offer that we come and stay with her until passage was possible. I say we accepted it, but the fact is we had no choice, as hanging about the harbour was going to gain us nothing but cold noses. That's where we are now, mums, safe and snug with Mara's family._

 _The first couple of hours were the hardest, partly for missing you, partly because with Mara's homecoming we felt more than ever that we were in the way. Not 24 hours later, all of that has dissipated –the awkwardness, not the missing you, mums –and we are camped out in the spare room, thoroughly integrated into the family._

 _I think you'd like them. Mara's mother is the ever-bustling sort that makes me think of Mrs. Lynde. As for the children that followed her clutching her skirts, they have a distinct air of young Davey and Dora about them –more Davey than Dora, I hasten to add. She was trying to greet Mara and they were leaping about like so many flying salmon, shouting for all they were worth._

 _At this point a curly-haired, green-eyed boy who looked as if he'd been grown from a willow-tree, came bounding towards our knot, swept Mara up off the ground with one arm and said in tones of jubilation, 'Sal you're home!'_

 _She laughed, cuffed him round the left ear, said she hadn't been Sal to anyone in years, and insisted he put her down at once. He did, and went on to engulf her in a bear hug. He didn't leave off the old pet-name._

 _It's at this point I ought to have a go at answering the question you posed, what feels a lifetime ago now, about the providence of Mara's name. I know_ _you've_ _always thought it had the ring of a story to it, but I never could remember to ask what it was because it suited Mara so well that I couldn't imagine her with another name, none of us could. Only she does have, as you've gathered. 'Mara' it emerges, is diminutive by some approximate route for 'Marsali,' which explanation she handed over her shoulder to Di and me in response to our exclamations of surprise on hearing the boy's greeting._ _He_ _turned out to be a brother, and Faith says we ought to have guessed, since he has the same impossible combination of common sense coupled with a look of having fallen out of a faerie-ring about him as Mara has. In our defence, there are any number of brothers and sisters. We've not met nearly all of them and already I've lost track of who is what to whom. In theory Mara has ten siblings, six of which are still at home. In reality, Anchorage is routinely and warmly overrun by a combination of sisters-in-law, aunts, cousins, nieces, nephews, uncles, neighbours, godparents, and family by absorption. Alec stands out though not so much for his being Mara's obvious favourite, but because of what they said to each other. We were being smartly filed into the house by Mara's mother, Elspeth –she is insisting we call her so and not Mrs. McNeilly –when he happened to mention, in the casual way of unthinking young men, that he was heading off to war in the New Year. The result of this declaration was to provoke Mara to speaking without thinking for the first time since we've met her._

 _'You'll be killed,' said Mara, seizing his arm with purpose. 'Alec –I've seen your fetch.'_

 _Alec went white, and it didn't suit him any more than it does his sister. 'I wish to God you wouldn't say things like that, Sal,' he said, trying for a joke and not quite landing it._

 _'Not half so much as I wish I didn't mean it,' said Mara, and tugged him into the house._

 _We fell half a pace behind on purpose, to let them talk, and Di murmured in my ear, 'I could do with Poppy's gift for interpretation about now. Have_ _you_ _any idea what a fetch is?'_

 _'It's a ghost,' said Shirley, surprising us, 'and you don't want to see them. They mean doom, or death.'_

 _We must have looked surprised as well as felt it, because he shrugged and said, 'Highland Sandy sometimes mentioned them, you must have heard.'_

 _You will be utterly unsurprised to hear that we were less than attentive to Highland Sandy as girls. Equally unsurprising, really, is that Shirley filed all those stories of his away for reference._

 _We divided at some point after that. Alec and some of the other men had been mending the shingles of a neighbouring house when we arrived, and he and Shirley went off to help them finish. Di made an effort to help get supper ready, found Elspeth McNeilly as ready a combatant in affairs of the kitchen as Mara, and was finally sent out by Mara's injunction to set the table. Somehow Faith and I both heard this and kept a straight face._

 _Have I explained that joke to you before? Sometime in our first year, at the height of the battle for the Swallowgate kitchen, Mara ran out of patience and suggested that if Di wanted to help, why didn't she lay the table? Di accordingly_ _did_ _and when Mara saw this worked, she continued to use it as a diversionary tactic. It took Faith and me a day or two to notice, but if Di's realised, she's never let on. We keep waiting for her to say something, and she never has yet._

 _Anyway, Mara reprised the old trick this evening with her usual terrifying efficiency in all things culinary, and I had one of those odd flashes of understanding I sometimes get when a piece for a story or an argument for an essay comes into place, and suddenly_ _knew_ _that just because Mara has always been two-thirds Faerie to the girls who pin hopes, did not mean she was –or is –that to her family. But of course she wouldn't be, the self we are at home with family is never the one we show to the world. That was what had startled Alec McNeilly so much; the sister he grew up with, Sal –who it turns out is a markedly different personality to Mara –is all crisp edges and practicality, and certainly doesn't quote verse, much less see fetches. It shouldn't have left me feeling I'd fallen down a well, because I think I'm a bit like that myself when I'm home –a different person I mean –but it did._

 _While all this had been going on, I had been adopted by small Maisie, who I feel_ _reasonably_ _confident asserting to be the youngest daughter of Mara's second-oldest brother. Parse that at your leisure. She affixed herself to me like a shadow as Elspeth was showing us to our room and apologising for putting us girls all in together. She left to start on supper, Di followed, and Faith sat down to write a letter to Jem. I know this as she asked if there was anything I wanted her to put in. I couldn't think of anything off-hand, partly because Maisie was hanging off my arm like a limpet in a way I have since discovered common of all the McNeilly children younger than eight or so. She began by dragging me out of the kitchen as Di was wrangling for control of the table with the brother –Alastair? –whose job it usually was to set it, and showing me over the house again, ending with what amounted to her Rainbow Valley. All the time we were walking she chattered at me in that convoluted way symptomatic of small children, only pausing to point out the rock where the brownie lived, where to go to look for elves, and where to avoid on account of water-horses (don't ask mums, I don't know and am afraid to find out). When Maisie had talked herself out, she installed me at the fire with all the insipient bossiness I'd expect of a relative of Mara's. That done she summoned a gaggle of her contemporaries by means of an ungodly war-whoop and launched a petition for a story._

 _Mara it transpires has built up my ability to tell a story from the distance of home, presumably never thinking we'd meet. There they were clamouring for a story, and all I could think was that to children who had obviously grown up on monsters, ghouls and demons, none of my off-the-cuff nonsenses would ever be sufficient. Mercifully Mara happened across us at this juncture, and divined that I was floundering, because she said, 'tell them one of your Lord Harington stories, Catkin, they'll be thrilled.'_

 _She then vanished to the root cellar and left me stranded. Unable to argue the point with her, and being in any case too overwhelmed with travel and exhaustion to come up with anything new, and supposing too that Mara knew the lot of little pixies better than I did, I took this diagnosis as Gospel and ran with it. Needless to say it was dead on, and I would have lost the rest of the evening in retelling the adventures of Lord Harrington had one of the sisters-in-law (I think), Senga, not come in and insisted that the children go out and find out what had become of their grandfather. As she said it she thrust a cup of steaming hot tea into my hands, plucked Maisie out of my lap, and shoved another log on the fire, practically in one motion. She didn't vanish the way Mara had but stayed long enough to stress that I was to take a hard line with the children and send them away when I didn't want them or else they would wring me out worse than a mangle with cheek and questions. This didn't seem_ _entirely_ _fair, but two and a half years living with Mara has conditioned me against arguing with exactly this kind of assertiveness. I promised I'd do my best and she left me to the ministrations of tea and the fire._

 _We regathered as supper approached. Faith came down with her letter, Shirley, Alec and Mara came in from wherever it was they had wandered to, covered in snow and talking animatedly about the German seizure of Bucharest, and Di re-emerged from the kitchen, table presumably set to the satisfaction of herself and the brother called Alastair. Maisie and her fellows came back with news of their elders, and –excepting Maisie, who nestled deep into my lap and promptly went to sleep, thumb in mouth–descended on Mara for entertainment. She was much nearer the version of her I've come to know with them, unpinning her hair for the littlest ones to plait and swapping politics for_ _The Tempest_ _, narrating with her hands as much as her voice. Poppy was right you know, she does do an exceptionally good Ariel, something not lost in the retelling, because partway through Alec interrupted to say, 'That part must have suited you to the teeth Sal.'_

 _His being right did nothing to stop the imps of the clan McNeilly shushing him in their eagerness to know what became of Caliban. (That says it all, don't you think? Di and I always wanted to know about Miranda –or whatever love-story there was to resolve –when you nursed us on Shakespeare. But then neither Di nor I could have told you what a fetch was, and I'll lay odds Maisie et al_ _can._ _)_

 _When Mara's father surfaced, he took over story-telling. I am discovering that storycraft is a thing to be revered in this family (didn't I tell you that you'd like them?) which partly explains the eagerness to hear one of my 'economies' on the part of the children. This lasted all through supper, and might have gone on long after had not Elspeth curtailed the rehashing of some family epic in the name of her guests getting a good night's sleep._

 _On that note I ought to tell you goodbye. These not being our candles, I'll feel guilty if I let them burn too low, and in any event, I suspect from the rustling in Faith's quarter that she wants to sleep. She never has been able to sleep with even the smallest of light squibs to catch her eye._

 _I have promised to enclose a kiss from Di, greetings from Faith and Shirley's best wishes, with an extra hug for Susan. He suggests too that to encourage you (read Susan as he almost certainly means her) I might just mention that excepting a different grace to ours and a candle for keeping track of the days left 'til Christmas, it's reasonably easy to make-believe we're in Presbyterian company. Love to you and dad and all at home –and if we_ _aren't_ _there but by some miracle you do receive this, a Happy Christmas._

 _Nan_


	16. Chapter 16

_Thank you, as ever for reading and/or reviewing. This is one of those chapters that fought me writing it at every turn, so I'd love to hear how it read!_

* * *

January brought the return of the girls who pinned hopes to Swallowgate with a gout of freezing rain and a plethora of questions about how the others had spent their holidays. Poppy had read about the storm on P.E.I and had Nan, Di, Faith and their families been all right? Mara was anxious to know –evidence before her notwithstanding –had they got home safely, while the Blythes and Merediths were equally anxious for news of the people who had so lately harboured them in their hour of need. Trying to stem this well-intentioned catechising, everyone spoke at once, rendering all answers incomprehensible, and signalling the restoration of Swallowgate to its usual state of merry chaos.

Abandoning cases and coats to the hall, they drifted into the sitting room, arms linked and laughing. There they fell easily into their old places, Faith perched on the window seat, Poppy vanished into the depths of the squashiest chair, and Di, having lost the battle for the kitchen, leaned against the base of the sofa, chin pillowed on her knees.

Nan knelt on the flags, fire screen drawn aside and carefully building up a log cabin of kindling. Di watched her hesitate over a birch log and decide against it and wondered obliquely Nan had become so proficient at fire-building. In their Rainbow Valley days it had been Jerry's job to stoke a fire, theirs had been the laying out of the feast for eating. Jem, of course had cooked the fish, once Faith had cleaned and gutted it, naturally. Shirley, Carl and Rilla hadn't featured in this ceremony, Carl out of a preoccupation with his bugs, the others because they had been too young, but Di thought Walter must have had a purpose. She reached for it and felt her heart lurch at the void of memory that opened up before her. Why couldn't she remember? Dimly, belatedly she became aware of Nan scrabbling awkwardly for something on the mantel.

'…next to Augie, maybe?' she was saying when Di emerged from her reverie. She had the distinct feeling this inquiry had been directed at her and was aware of an expectation that she do something, but she was still immobilized by that terrifying lapse of her memory. Would she forget all of Walter, or only the details? Faith had, of course, in her crisp, starched way, divined something was the matter and had gone to the mantel in Di's place.

'Here,' she said, extracting a box of matches from the shelter of a blue dachshund and handing them to Nan. There was the sharp, acrid smell of burning and then the little wisps of newspaper caught, dissolving into tongues of flame that lapped at the kindling. Nan hesitated again, then reached for a birch log and set it gingerly atop the burning cabin construction, careful not to smother the nascent flames.

It took a day to fall into the old habit of sitting down by the fire to Red Cross work. A week back saw them arranged by the fire, in the squashy chairs around it and the floor next to it –Di attempting a letter, Faith reading and the others sewing what the Red Cross books called operation gowns – when Peter's flat-palmed knock sounded at the door. Poppy detached herself from their lattice of limbs and cherry-blossom china without a murmur and wove her way through the end tables, bolts of cloth and china shepherdesses into the hall. A shudder of cold passed through the bones of the house as the door opened, and then Peter's half-apologetic pronouncement that he had brought the mail to them. Near the fire ears pricked in a ripple of vicarious hope, but there followed only the gusting of the wind and the rattling of the sycamores against the windows. Once Faith half-rose to see what had become of them, but stumbled when Mara's hand caught at the hem of her skirt, forestalling her.

'Leave them alone,' said Mara, voice warm with amusement. 'If Mouse tells anyone, it will be you first of all of us anyway.' Faith laughed outright and resettled herself against the corner of the window seat nearest the fire, now burning steadily and emitting low pops as the resin knots of the birch log burst from within it.

'Couldn't he visit?' said Nan when Poppy re-emerged letters in hand. Poppy waved the question away with all the absentmindedness of a girl dwelling inwardly on a secret and began sorting the letters.

'All the usual stuff of course,' she said 'to do with Swallowgate and it's upkeep including one from the nephew offering to prune the sycamores for us in the spring which I think we'd better take him up on. There's a parcel for Mara and a letter for you from Ingleside.' This she held out to Nan, who had slit the seal with her teaspoon, and thereafter the attention of the girls who pinned hopes fell on her as they drank in the latest news of Ingleside and its occupants, sewing grammars and writing forgotten.

 _Darling girl,_ it began with Anne Blythe's comfortable intimacy,

 _Put your mother out of her misery and tell me, is Catkin another of Mara's inventions? If so, consider this a long-overdue seconding to your opinion that she's 'knacky' at renaming people. What I really wanted to know though is if I could borrow it or if it is something strictly between friends. If it is, consider the question unasked –I promise faithfully never to say another word on the subject._ _I've been meaning to ask ever since discovering it –it suits you to the bones – but of course what with a month's worth of Avonlea news, and your stories of Halifax, and wee Jims' nearly dying of croup I never…._

Further news was curtailed by startled cries of 'Jims nearly died?' from the unaware.

'At the height of a snowstorm,' said Nan, settling into the story.

She hardly appeared to have heard Di's 'May I?' and was unresisting when she extracted the letter from between her sister's fingers.

Their mother went on to chronicle the further misadventures of Doc, Susan's latest argument with Cousin Sophia and a story or two about her Avonlea sojourn that she had meant to share over Christmas but had forgotten in the last-minute excitement of their reunion.

 _Be sure to let me know your opinion on Milton,_ it concluded with all the warmth of the crackling fire, _I happen to think Paradise is much better left lost from a literary perspective, though I expect Susan would have a fit if she were to hear me say so. Susan though has never had to wade through Paradise Regained. You try, won't you, and tell me how -or if! -you get on. And be sure to give the old library my greetings when you next have cause to collect books from it. All my love…_

Faith was offering some remedy including an egg white as an alternative to Mary Vance's 'smoking' of Jims over the coals when Di emerged from her reading.

'You and mother make it look easy,' said Di to Nan, handing the letter back.

'What this?' She gestured to their mother's curlicued writing, 'It _is_ easy –like turning a tap. Everything bubbles to the surface.'

'Do you think so?'

'Don't you?' Nan said, surprised.

'Mm,' said Di, carefully neutral, and resumed her own recalcitrant correspondence. 'Not at the moment.'

'Is that what you've been doing? I was sure you had finally found inspiration for the essay on Milton.'

'Nothing so industrious,' said Di.

Nan sloughed off the sprawl of fabric that had taken over her lap and came to snuggle against her sister next to the fire.

'The smoke's getting into your hair,' she said, her chin poised on Di's shoulder. 'You smell all green and woodsy. It's nice. Who are you writing to anyway?'

Di didn't answer. This did not appear to faze Nan, who said, displaying a hitherto unsuspected gift for reading upside-down, 'You know, I don't pretend to be an expert by any means -I certainly won't claim to know Andrew as well as you do - but I don't think it's supposed to cost so much effort.'

'You don't find you have to think carefully about what and how you say things?'

'No.' This from Nan, Faith and Mara without an ounce of hesitation between them. They were all so sure that Di turned to Poppy for reinforcement. Poppy though only shrugged and said to the operation gown she was sewing, 'I wouldn't know –I've never been at the mercy of letters.'

They fell uneasily silent, though the sap knots continued to pop like corns. To Di, squinting at her unfinished letter they sounded like further affirmation, the burning amber smell of them mingling with the smoke and blended with the taut atmospheric undercurrent of their Red Cross work.

'This might help,' said Mara. 'The letter was to me, but I've been given strict instructions to give you this. I gather you expressed an interest in it.'

She handed Di a slim volume with _North of Boston_ embossed on the cover.

'Essays?' asked Nan, still reading over her sister's shoulder.

'Poetry. We got talking about it apparently on one of the evenings when you and Maisie were hunting elves or something. All I said was that I'd be interested to read it. I never meant –'

' _I_ know what you meant. I've lived with you for –how long now? Anyway Alastair wasn't to be persuaded. You're to enjoy it, not rush to return it. He's very clear about that, probably because he knows _me_ well enough to know what a luxury spare time is.' So saying she rose and made a beeline for the kitchen before anyone could think to wrest it from her. Di, _North of Boston_ still in hand, tried to follow, but was hindered by Nan, who snared her ankle in one long-fingered hand and said with affection, 'We have spare time _now_ and I'm curious. Shall we look?'

Mara reappeared with a fresh pot of tea and the girls who pinned hopes convened on the floor the better to drink it and pour over _North of Boston_ where hitherto undiscovered gems shone ink-sheened upon its pages. The tea tasted of winter spice, and threaded its way through the marrow of Di's bones as she drank. Softly the sap knots continued to blister and pop, now only a comfortable counterpoint to the hush occasioned by the poetry.

 _Something there is that does not love a wall_ …Comfort fractured as there on the page rose up the ghost of those last memories of Walter. The ink and the words gleamed dewily in a mist of unlooked for tears that prickled at Di's eyes.

'All right?' said Nan, catching at them, her breath ticklishly warm on Di's ear.

Di nodded, smiled and must have looked too anxiously at those last words, _good fences make good neighbours_ , because very gently Nan shut the book and said, with the lightest touch of whimsy, 'Clearly he's never lived next to _our_ neighbours.'

Di impulsively looked out the window to the darkening afternoon light where the skeletal outline of the next-door brambles encroached on the yard in spite of the fence.

'No,' Di said, torn between the impulse to tease Nan for missing a metaphor and feeling the hard bubble of laughter lodged in her throat, promising more tears if she gave in to it. 'No, clearly not.'

Nan, it transpired, understood all too well though, because she laced her arms tight around Di's middle and said, 'it wasn't like that with you and Walter. There were gaps between you. What was the line?'

'Something about spring mending,' said Di, 'About gaps and fissures opening up unlooked for. Mara's the one who's supposed to be able to memorize lines virtually on sight.

' _No one has seen them made or heard them made/ but springtime mending finds them there_ ' Mara cautiously said, turning it gently into a question. It was so on point though that this time the blister of laughter burst, and Di laughed, they all did.

'That's the one,' said Nan. 'It was like that with you and Walter I think. Neither of you could sustain a fence with _don't trespass_ stamped on it for long, so there were always little fissures opening up in the barriers you created and bringing you back together again.'

'Thank you,' Di said and reopened _North of Boston_.

'Always,' said Nan.

* * *

February brought driving rain that rattled against the windows like timpani. Poppy insisted it boded well for the harvest, but then Poppy, Di said to her sister one afternoon, was not only naturally optimistic, but in this case entirely justified in being so, since the only person not housebound by the recent weather was Peter, who had taken to calling so often at Swallowgate -bearing firewood, anxious that the eaves were clear of debris or else prepared to run errands -s0 often that it had become unspoken practice to vanish into the nooks and crannies of the house and leave hosting to Poppy on these occasions.

'Because,' as Faith observed one afternoon to Di, 'he's either a duck, related to a duck, or sweet on her.'

'I thought we were taking that last as read,' Di said.

'In which case,' said Faith, 'there is nothing anyone can do that won't get in the way.'

Accordingly they had retreated to the havens of their rooms, and seeing no other alternative had begun the dire business of wrestling with assigned reading and essays. Nan's gentle admonishment to Di, therefore, prompted by the bristling of pen against paper that 'You're getting ahead of me, and it isn't fair -you've always read faster,' was not unreasonable.

'Hm?' said Di, when she looked up from her perusal of _North of Boston_.

'On that essay about Milton. You're getting ahead of me.'

'Hardly,' said Di, 'this is only me reading for leisure.' Then feeling she ought to apologise, 'I've never been able to work in the evenings. I can't sleep otherwise. My brain doesn't let me.'

Nan crossed the room and wormed her way into bed next to Di, tucking her feet against the back of her sister's knees and contorting her head to read the spine of the book under examination lest it be Milton after all.

'Still?' she said when confronted at close quarters with the poetry of Robert Frost, 'I'd have thought you'd have read that collection through by now. Besides, I could have sworn I heard you writing. 'There, you see, you were.' Deftly she leaned over Di's shoulder and extracted the pen from her fingers with a murmured protest about getting ink on the sheets.

'What was it then, a letter?'

'No. I wrote a thank-you for it ages ago.'

'I thought you found letters difficult?'

'Well thank you letters are always different. You're guaranteed a subject. If you want to know, I was copying out the pieces I wanted to stick. Here, I don't believe you saw this one, and you'll like it, _essence of winter sleep is on the night/ the scent of apples, I am drifting off…_ doesn't it sound like autumn to you?'

'Yes,' said Nan, stretching the word to two syllables and with a look of deliberation about her that made Di raise her eyebrows in inquiry.

'All right?'

Nan waved a hand dismissively. 'Perfectly. Can I see the others?'

'You're welcome to the book if you like.'

'I couldn't possibly, you need it to keep the paper stiff for writing on.'

Di nodded acknowledgement of this and parted with the sheaf of papers that had resulted from her transcriptions of the poems.

'You're taking an awful lot of trouble over these,' said Nan presently. 'You're turning you're fingers black, look. You've ink all along your ring finger. Are you so sure the bookshop in Kingsport won't carry a copy?'

'I hadn't thought.'

They fell silent again, the only sounds the somnambulant hum of the house, the drone of the rain, and the scratch of Di's pen nib.

'You will be careful, won't you?' said Nan suddenly, startling Di out of the narrow world of her reading.

'Careful of what?'

'I haven't quite decided. Just a feeling I have.'

'For you,' said Di, wrapping her unencumbered hand around her sister's shoulders, 'always.'

* * *

 _Quoted here are 'Mending Wall' and 'After Apple Picking,' both poems by Robert Frost and contained in the collection North of Boston_.


	17. Chapter 17

_Thank you as ever to those of you reading and/or reviewing._

* * *

In April the girls who pinned hopes spent their first evening outside since spring had deigned to arrive on the heels of a dying March. Nan built up a fire tepee-style to stave off the residual evening chill, and naturally they reasoned that no one could be safe sewing next to an open fire, not when it routinely sent up showers of sparks like flares. Instead they armed themselves with indulgences, charcoals, poetry, quilts for sitting on. If _North of Boston_ was as flammable as the standard-issue Red Cross cotton, if Nan's drop-spindle or Mara's woodwork were as likely to burn as the kindling Nan stoked the fire with, they affected not to notice.

The weather was cool, the air full of the lush, verdant smells of spring and the lawn bristling with unexpected flowers, the result, so Poppy said, of the wet and protracted winter. Among the unwanted interlopers that dotted the lawn were clusters of a yellow sun-like flowers that Di called button-flowers for the look of them and Mara 'elfwort' for reasons no one dared to question. Whatever they were called, when Mara threw them onto the fire to vanquish them, they sweetened the curls of smoke rising heavenward.

'You knew it would do that,' said Nan, inhaling the rich aromatic smell of peppermint and gold. There was no hint of a question in her voice; she fed a desiccated yew twig into the fire and opposite her Mara shrugged non-comitally, and let a curl of birchwood fall into the flames.

'Of course Mara knew,' said Poppy. 'All that time in fairyland stuck. Why _did_ they never get around to making you Titania, anyway?'

'That's an easy one –not nearly demanding enough,' Faith said and their circle rippled with laughter. Mara thought about arguing that at no point had her class ever staged _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ in the first instance and that neither Illyria nor Prospero's island constituted fairylands in the second, but thought better of it. For once there was no need to keep laughter at bay, and it felt good. America was joining the war and hopefulness blossomed as readily as the elecampane she was trying to root out of the lawn. The smoke unfurled like incense and Nan said, 'There's always next year, I suppose.'

'I shouldn't think so,' said Poppy with her usual immovable faith in Mara's theatrics, 'it will be Mara's leading that sticks, you watch. Anyway, I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover they were half-afraid of your gift for rendering sylphs and sprites.'

'Oh they are,' said Mara carelessly. She threw more of the elfwort onto the fire, intoning for effect, ' _I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, /where oxclips and nodding violet grows_ …'

There was more laughter, ethereal and silvery in the firelight. The boon of freedom from work and obligation had left the air thick as much with the giddiness of unstructured time as with the peppermint smell of the smoke. The fire crackled and Pilgrim came rustling out of a cluster of thistles, with a tail full of burrs and a mouthful of feathers. Mara got the bird out of his mouth, manoeuvred him onto her lap and unpicking the burrs said across the fire to Nan, 'Tell us one of your economies, Catkin.'

Nan lay back on the repurposed appleleaf quilt, hands folded behind her head and observed to the stars, 'If I could have anything in the world…I think I'd wish for it to be like this always. Not the war, naturally, but this, here. The fire and the easiness, the comfort. Us together and the peppermint smell of heaven and Ingleside. But that doesn't make for much of a story…hm …what did you say the Christian name was for that stuff you're feeding my fire, Mara? Helen's Tears? We'll begin the way the Greeks do then, I think, with the end of a red piece of thread…'and deftly she wove them a story of a friendship with all its rents, aches, partings and a deep-rooted affection to outlast the rest.

* * *

Swallowgate was quiet. Standing in front of the blue door with its archaic and cumbersome knocker, Shirley Blythe knew better than to knock. Swallowgate with people at home verily thrummed with energy and bustle whether it was Poppy at the harp, Nan and Di dissecting literature, Mara's theatrics or only the usual frenetic chatter that sweetened the Red Cross work. This afternoon the air was heavy with the summery smell of sun-warmed atmosphere and the first sound to penetrate the hush was the heartthrob song of the swallows among the eaves. Rather than scatter them with knocking, he went around the side of the house and into the garden, where Mara appeared to be alternating between foraging and weeding. She had amassed a basket of cuttings that ran the gamut from the self-explanatory storksbill and self-heal to bitter-scented, yellow-headed dandelions. She worked a nail under one of these as he approached then brought it up by the roots with the self-willed determination of someone attempting the impossible. Clearly they weren't intended for any purpose, she just wanted them out of the lawn in the name of neatness and order.

'Why the yarrow?'

'Where? Here or there?' said Mara, accepting this unorthodox greeting with no vestige of surprise and nodding from the basket to the row of yarrow flowers lining the fence.

'Faith wanted it for salve, and I wanted it to discourage invasive flowers.'

'Any luck?'

'Well it's not for want of bloody trying.' This bout of exasperation was directed at a cluster of nettles growing wilfully through the slats of the fence, which she swiped at viciously. Evidently the stings took root in her fingers because she made a fist of her hand and curled it against her stomach with a hiss.

'Docket's on its rightful side, I take it?' Shirley asked, prising her fingers apart and brushing a thumb against them. The nettles had left little red welts like teeth that could easily be misinterpreted as too inconsequential to hurt.

'Something like that.'

The yellow of the yarrow was all over her hands; she smelled of it and of the dandelions, of grass, clover and parsley. Something else too that Shirley thought might be silk, the latest Red Cross endeavour having been parachutes. Nan's letters were full of the pitfalls this effort engendered, the slipperiness and unwieldy dimensions of the fabric not least of these.

'May I?'

She might have said anything, because she had reached for Gaelic before English but it hardly mattered. Far from resisting Mara fell almost compulsively into his arms as they wrapped around her, her head resting instinctually in the hollow under his chin. The mixture of garden-fresh greenery, kitchen herbs and silk wasn't only in her hands but in her skin and hair too, overwhelmingly so. Without thinking to do it, Shirely kissed her. It was like taking a match to a birch log; she went in the space between heartbeats from taut hesitation to kindled flame. He could not remember before wanting anything so much. For a dizzying moment time stood still, spun an everywhere of the garden, the row of yellow yarrow and the encroaching nettles. Then vertigo got the better of him, his balance gave way, and Shirley found himself thinking inexplicably of Shakespeare, school and that archaic joke _thou wilt fall backward_ and wanted to laugh. He hadn't understood it in his senior school days, but thought he did now, his weight balanced carefully on his elbows and Mara's fingers curled tight and warm against the whorls of wool in his uniform. She seemed to see it and decipher it for the first time then, and little wonder, thought Shirley if she hadn't before –he hadn't given her the time. She pulled away, hands shifting to trace the cut of the collar, the curve of the buttons. All she said though was 'That colour blue suits you.'

'Good. I expect I'll be stuck with it for a while.'

'Don't. It's one thing to lose an end in knitting, something else entirely to lose one among politics. There's only so much of going blindly into disaster we can face, you know.'

Well and there was something in that. It was what Mother Susan had been trying to say about all the politicians and their blether these last three years. If something had to be done –and this clearly had –it might as well be done quickly and cleanly and soon over. Reality wasn't always so neat, though he hated to say so.

Instead he drew Mara's head onto his shoulder, his fingers idly smoothing the golden snake of her where it fell loose over her shoulders. There were red strands after all he saw, little threads of copper among the gold that sunbursts coaxed out –Faith had often drawn her that way, but this was the first he'd seen of them. Shirley teased a clover root out from among them and recalled that some malign Drew had once said of red hair that it bespoke witchery; he'd never believed it though because Mother for all her daydreams was rooted on solid ground, and Di too. Now… Well if ever there was a time to start believing in snares and charms, he thought this likely it.

'What are you thinking?'

'That Faerie is catching.'

Mara laughed. The basket with its flowers had been overturned by some impatient foot or misjudged ankle. Her hand snaked through the grass and came up with the purpley blossom of a self-heal and tracing the curve of his clavicle with it, she murmured ;

 _Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell:_

 _It fell upon a little western flower,_

 _Before, milk-white, now purple with love's wound,_

 _And maidens call it love-in-idleness._

'You'll appreciate I only play the part.'

'To devastating effect.'

He caught her wrist and stilled her hand, pinning the self-heal ticklishly against his skin. He bent his head to kiss her again and felt the rekindling of that flame, and then the sun shifted and Mara turned her head, propelling herself upward with her free hand. The warmth of the day notwithstanding, there was a rush of cool air to occupy the void her absence created.

'I ought to start supper,' she said, beginning to regather the flower cuttings into their basket.

'Where does 'ought' come into it?'

'I'll be sure to tell your sisters you feel so ambivalently about eating. It's my evening to prepare it.'

'I was under the impression that was a point of debate, who did the cooking.'

'It can be. It's harder to take over a work in progress though, and all of us have better ways to spend late afternoon than wrangling for the kitchen.'

Shirley had managed to get an arm around her waist in an effort to draw her back, but her hands still skittered through the grass collecting the scattered flowers, even the invasive dandelions. Flowers regathered, Mara was on her feet in a moment and running across the lawn, gold hair and streaming and fleet-footed as any ariel, singing on snatches of breath, _where the bee sucks there suck I…_

By the time the others returned Mara was sitting at the pine table and had traded Shakespeare for humming something soft and slow with a Scotch snap to the rhythm. Shirley had taken to the corner nearest the stairs and was engaged in a game of Dodge with Pilgrim's claws. Initially Nan and Di missed him because they were preoccupied with Mara's fish, which to judge from appearances had retained their eyes. When they did notice though a plethora of questions descended like spring rain, chiefest of these, 'Why didn't you _tell_ us? Why didn't you _say_ you were coming?'

There was any number of possible answers; that Shirley had only discovered at the eleventh hour that Kingsport had an airbase or that he was destined for it was true, as was his horror of the fuss that foreknowledge would have certainly occasioned. Instead though he offered them the Blythe smile, three-parts mischief to one part wry humour and said, 'well I got such a warm reception last time –thought I'd try my luck again.'

'Oh?' said Poppy, coming in on the heels of the twins, and nibbling at a fish eye, 'how did you find it?'

'Remarkably good,' said Shirley, hesitating too long and finding his hand in the vice of Pilgrim's claws. Mara broke off the Scottch Snap to admonish the cat but it was a moot point, with all the expertise of one fluent in Cat, Shirley had let his hand go limp and Pilgrim had already lost interest, crossing the room instead to stare intently at the fish Mara was skinning. They stared back disconcertedly and the twins retreated into the corner to further their barrage of questions where dinner wouldn't be able to look at them. It wasn't that they didn't know for a certainty that frugality meant Mara kept the fish eyes in the heads –they'd known that for years –it was that so far they had successfully avoided seeing this fact in the raw flesh. Ensconced in the space Pilgrim had so lately occupied they unfolded their knitting and all the fuss Shirley had anticipated commenced with the setting of heels.

'How long are you here? What are you doing? When did you go into Charlottetown? Have we missed mums' letter with the news? Or Susan? Surely she wrote at once to tell us. Did you ask them not to?' These and any number of questions were hurtled at him while the knitting needles clicked in time to _Ho ro Mhairi Dhu_.

'You know,' said Shirley, declining to give in to the Inquisition opposite, 'I did come up the way with news if you want it.'

'Oh?' That stopped everything, the knitting, the Scotch snap, Faith and Poppy's increasingly hopeless battle to pin silk for a parachute to its cut-out. Seizing an opportunity, Pilgrim made a calculated leap onto the scrub pine table and commenced to noisily eat the entrails of the fish while Shirley relayed the victory of Vimy Ridge to the girls who pinned hopes.

'They're saying no one else could do it –that the British tried, and the French, that apparently we don't know a lost cause when we see one.'

Faith snorted with indignation, then let out a war whoop to rival Jem's of old and threw the silk of the recalcitrant would-be parachute into the air in lieu of a hat. Startled, Pilgrim abandoned the fish guts and beat a hasty retreat up the stairs, only to tear down them again in a heartbeat and shelter under Mara's skirt. Poppy was laughing, whether at the spectacle or from relief was unclear; Nan was beaming like a sunrise and Di glowed quietly.

Then the moment passed, they sobered and Nan said, 'and you're really going into this overly-optimistic, frequently chaotic catastrophe, Nutkin? Just like that?'

'Just like that. I've got to,'

'Yes,' Nan said with reluctance, 'I quite see that –but for God's sake be careful, won't you?'

'That's the plan,' Shirley said, tweaking Nan's ear gently.

'Good,' said quietly, fiercely even from the scrub pine table. By the time Poppy had turned her head, Mara had picked up the thread of _Turn Ye to Me_ again and was tidying the mess Pilgrim had made of the fish innards. The twins overlooked all of it, and understandably so; their brother was going away to war and the gaping void of potential loss had reopened before them like a hungry mouth. Faith had noticed though and was now engaged in the kind of silent conversation with Poppy that said all too plainly that to keep a secret at Swallowgate was a lost cause. One might as well lasso the moon and sell it.

It was hardly a surprise then when Poppy followed him to the door after dinner, trailing green knitting and said, 'You mustn't do anything to hurt her you know.

'Not for worlds, Mouse,' said Shirley.

'Good,' said Poppy. 'I know Nan and Di are family and have to forgive you whatever you do –Faith too, probably –but I don't.' She beamed seraphically at him. 'Vagaries never do any good, I think.'

'No,' said Shirley and stepped out into the night. The moon was high, the air thick with moths and midges. At the gate he lingered, listening. Swallowgate was jocound. From the eaves came the sob of the swallows and through the open windows drifted the sounds of the house, the clatter of the washing up, the forsaken wail of Pilgrim and above all of it, threaded like gossamer, was the laughter of the girls who pinned hopes.


	18. Chapter 18

_I once thought I could tell this story in twenty chapters, and fit each year into five chapters. Oh foolish, naive past me. We appear to be still in 1917 and not to be going anywhere for a bit, so in all seriousness, if the narrative ever feels like it's dragging, I want to know. Thank you always for reading and/or reviewing; I always think reading is something of a contract between reader and writer -knowing you're on the other end of this one means a lot._

* * *

'Hell and Damnation,' said Faith irritably, looking up from a letter that had come in the post, and startling her breakfast companions.

'I thought you were a minister's daughter,' said Mara, assuming a most theatrical variety of amusement.

'I am. One who is invoking the basic tenets of Calvinism. Don't tell me you've never read –no hang on, thinking about it, you probably haven't have you?'

'No,' said Mara, theatricality spilling over into genuine entertainment. Faith waved a hand dismissively.

'You'll want to read this,' she said, offering the letter to Nan, who made a faint squeaking noise like a mouse dying.

'Jerry's not –killed –is he?' asked Nan when her throat began to work again.

'No,' said Faith, 'not that, though it's bad enough.'

She scraped her chair back from the table and began to pace the length of the living room, needing suddenly to be moving. Dimly she was aware of Di rising and going to comfort her twin, of Poppy's almost aural wince of sympathy and Mara's look of reproach. She couldn't sit there though, demure and mannered in the face of her sister's letter about Jerry taking a bullet in the back. She needed to be doing, she needed purpose. The living room was too small. With a mumbled explanation to the others, Faith bolted out of the house and collided with an unsuspecting Ruthie on the doorstep. They fell into a heap among the heat-wilted geraniums and the lingering slough of winter-decayed leaves, Faith eyeing the other girl warily as Ruthie dusted the traces of garden from her skirt and got to her feet.

'You're not bearing bad news, are you?' said Faith, thinking uncharitability was forgivable in the face of that morning's letters.

'No,' said Ruthie, extending a hand to Faith, who still sat bunched on the garden walk. 'You have though, and mine will keep. It was good news as it happens. I thought Di might…well I wasn't sure, but Poppy was so _angry_ and Mara too, after Walter died and I didn't…I thought Di might like to know, anyway. Not that it matters now, all my uncertainty. Come on, we'll go for a ramble out towards the pond. See how the ducks are taking the mugginess of this spring. That always helps.'

'Are you sure?' asked Faith, still eyeing Ruthie dubiously. 'I mean, if you were planning on catching Di –they're all still at the table. I was overwhelmed with a mood and thought I'd better bolt. I still don't think I'm fit for human consumption quite yet.'

'Oh I have moods like that too,' said Ruthie disarmingly, and beaming with such brightness as to cast the veracity of this statement into serious doubt.

'Well if you're certain,' said Faith, and she looped her arm through Ruthie's.

They walked down past St. John's graveyard, and the famous park with the gazebo the Blythes and Merediths had heard so much tell about, stopping in the end by the pond, which lay satin-smooth and shimmering in a haze of white heat.

'It will be thick with fish by now, I expect,' said Faith, looking at it and thinking of Jem and their Rainbow Valley feasts.

'The ducks certainly think so,' said Ruthie. 'Look at them diving, don't they look like overbalanced tops?'

What they looked to Faith was refreshed; even the grass was pearled with moisture so humid was the air, but before she could say so, Ruthie had rushed on still further. 'Are you going to tell me about it?'

It was such an abrupt about-face that Faith sat down on the ground, headless of the damp, much less of its half-buried thistles and bramble shoots. Ruthie sat down beside her, smoothing the blue muslin of her skirt decorously around her and drew her knees up under her chin. That was strange –Ruthie looked too much like one of the Swallowgate china shepherdesses to sit so unconcernedly on water-sheened grass and risk stains –but stranger still, Faith _did_ tell her. There was a mace-headed thistle sticking painfully in her thigh and a stone pressing against the arch of her foot that she was sure would leave a bruise, and yet for the first time since opening Una's letter at breakfast, Faith felt she could give vent to the sense of unfairness it had roused in her. Up bubbled her grief over Jerry's back, Bruce's foreshortened innocence and Una's increasing self-reliance.

'She hardly ever writes to me now without bringing the blasted war into it,' said Faith, feeling nothing but swearing would adequately convey the severity of this act of desertion. 'She's _supposed_ to be preoccupied with organising greenery for the church, and the best way to stop a cake sinking, not filling pages on the battle at Lagincourt and her opinions on the Palestinian Stalemate. She shouldn't _have_ an opinion on the Palestinian Stalemate –she doesn't read about politics! And in the meantime, I'm stuck here endeavouring to order Italian superlatives and _passé sample_ , for all the good that does anyone.'

Poppy would have soothed her. Nan would have whispered a story in her ear, Di would have sympathised, Faith suspected, even without a concrete solution to offer her, and Mara would have put the kettle on.

Ruthie fished in her coat pocket and came out with a sheaf of papers. 'Here,' she said, holding them out to Faith. 'I've been carrying them about for weeks. I can't decide if I ought to do anything or not. Every time I think I ought I think of another reason why I oughtn't. I was beginning to think I'd better take a hatpin to them.' She grinned. 'Evidently I've been holding onto them against meeting someone who will know what to do with them.'

Faith grinned back at her, though it dimmed to a look of puzzlement when she spared a glance for the leaflets in front of her. _Serve on all fronts,_ said the one on top, with its picture of a caped and capped nurse, red sash across her chest.

'Look at them properly when you get home,' said Ruthie. 'In the meantime, you and I are going to try and see if we can't rival Nan Blythe for surrounding ourselves with things we'd like but can't have.'

'She does tell the most remarkable stories, doesn't she?' said Faith.

'She does. It's excellent economy too. I haven't her knack for storytelling though, so thought we'd more practically go into town and look at the milliner's that started up, what do you think?'

What Faith actually thought was that her heart ached, her feet were bruised, her knees were cramped from sitting, and the ground damp. Ruthie's combination of cheerfulness and optimism would stomach no opposition though, and without realising she did it, Faith allowed herself to be led through Kingsport to a quaint shop tucked away on one of the wynds so easily overlooked by the casual window-browser.

It was a charming shop, and they spent a pleasant half-hour trying on hats. Ruthie favoured a deep blue merry widow hat bedecked with navy ribbon and trailing lace, Faith a more closely fitted cloche-style hat that turned her eyes the colour of a fine, tawny port. She let it go with a pang, belatedly catching Ruthie's eyes on her and spotting the glimmer of a plot in them.

'Don't you _dare_ ,' she said, no less fiercely for whispering. 'You're meant to be living on that scholarship money, not spending it to humour my moods.'

'I'm living fine on the scholarship money,' said Ruthie. 'I've been saving to send real brown sugar fudge to Sam, Jake and Andrew but I can easily knit them socks instead, they'd understand. Especially when I tell them how well it suits you.'

'Ruthie,' began Faith warningly, but Ruthie only shook her head, brown eyes laughing.

'Indulge me,' she said, playful and regal at once.

'I oughtn't let you,' said Faith feebly.

'You're going to,' Ruthie said, not, apparently, the least undecided about this. 'We'll make it a Christmas gift, if that eases your conscience any.'

'An exceptionally early one,' said Faith dryly.

'A graduation gift then, you're due one, aren't you?'

'Don't remind me. My stomach turns a somersault every time I remember.'

'This will sweeten the recollection then,' said Ruthie.

Impulsively, Faith engulfed her in a hug. 'Thank you,' she said. **'** I wonder –what was it you were dithering about passing on when I ran into you?'

'Oh that,' said Ruthie as they left the shop. 'Nothing that won't wait.'

Faith waited.

'I don't suppose,' said Ruthie all at once 'does Di still write to Andrew? Do you know?'

'I've really no idea,' said Faith feeling helpless. 'Would it help make up your mind if I did?'

'Something like that,' said Ruthie.

Faith returned to Swallowgate free of the shadow that had descended on her with Una's letter. She came into the house with a clatter, giving the others time to scatter if they chose, and then went in search of Nan, who she found ensconced in the squashed armchair in a shadowed corner of the living room. She was all angles, a book of what Faith took to be _Vindications of the Rights of Women_ –her latest prescribed reading –balanced precariously on the arm of the chair.

'You have hardly any light, sitting there,' said Faith conversationally.

Nan stuck a finger into the Wollstonecraft to keep her place and said, 'I don't mind, I've read it all before. One of mums' books that Jem and I found on a rainy afternoon –oh years ago –and read aloud to each other. It was a grim day –I mean we saw more water than Noah did at the flood –and when we'd exhausted it we exhumed the letters mums had written to dad while he was studying to become a doctor, and his answers, and read those instead. _They_ had the good manners to outlast the weather.'

Faith found herself smiling, and it was catching. Nan's mouth dimpled at the corners and then blossomed like a rose.

'I'm glad you're feeling better,' she said, substituting her index finger for a proper bookmark, the better to abandon _Vindications_ and join Faith on the sofa.

'I'm sorry about earlier,' said Faith. 'I shouldn't have burst out like that. I thought I'd got past the impulsive acting-without-thinking stage, but evidently not.'

'Don't be daft,' said Nan, slipping an arm around Faith's shoulders. 'Of course you worry. You're right to, he's your brother.'

'And your heart.'

'You can be uncannily clever sometimes, does no one tell you?'

'Jerry used to. Not so much lately.'

'I'm sorry,' said Nan, laying her head on Faith's shoulder, where her hair shone like polished oak in the hazy light of the morning. Winter might have been drear and unending, but spring was verily rushing to meet the summer.

'Me too. I don't suppose I like those bursts of frustration any more than you do. It's just…oh it isn't any one thing, only half a dozen all at once. It's Jerry being shot, Bruce growing up –it's dad having to give extemporary sermons because his parishioners have made sure he has no time to write them –'

'Rilla knitting her own heels for socks,' said Nan, effortlessly picking up the litany, 'or organising war-weddings, and Jims mastering a new word. It was **'** won't' this week, with great vim I gather. I do know how you feel.'

'I know you do,' said Faith, twisting an escaped curl back into Nan's unravelling cadogan knot. 'Don't mind me if I forget, darling, I'm liable to be selfish by turns. The people at home will tell you.'

'You're liable to be human,' said Nan. 'I'm glad –I don't think I could get on at all well with a saint.'

'You tolerate Mouse well enough,' said Faith, and grinned again.

'Oh well,' said Nan, 'Mouse's different. She's more wounded bird than saint. I live in perpetual fear that she will have her heart broken and –well, I suppose we're wary enough of that, you and I not to wish the feeling on anyone.'

'Mm,' said Faith, 'least of all Poppy.'

'Exactly,' said Nan, straightening up. She rubbed a crick out of her neck with a grimace and then said, real regret lining her voice, 'I'd better go back Wollstonecraft. She insists we're all rational creatures, you know, but I don't much feel like one today.'

'I'm tolerably sure I _wasn't_ earlier.'

'If you think I was,' said Nan lightly, 'then you really must have gone mad. But look, if baby Rilla has grown into something resembling a sensible, rational creature then there's hope for you and me yet.'

'I'll take your word for it.'

'Good. I think I'd better vanish back into Wollstonecraft though, if her didactics are going to do me much good. Let me know if word arrives of further news or something, will you?'

'Of course.'

Nan went, an alone with her thoughts, Faith's mind turned back to Ruthie's offering of the pamphlets. She crept carefully out of the living room so as not to disturb its resident English scholar, and fished them out of her coat pocket, before taking them to the window-seat to study with a clear mind.


	19. Chapter 19

_With thanks always for reading and/or reviewing._

* * *

 _Swallowgate,_

 _Kingsport,_

 _1 June 1917_

 _Dear mums,_

 _This letter is coming to you ages too late, and I haven't anything like a good excuse. We came back to Swallowgate and suddenly everything was about endings, and there were so many of them that I_ _had_ _to spend as much time as I could with Faith before she left. The world is so terrifyingly uncertain at the moment that I was afraid if she went and I'd taken even half an hour to scribble you a note, it would be half an hour with her I'd never get the chance to make up. Forgive me? I promise solemnly to make it up to you now._

 _We_ _needed_ _that week at home with you in April. All right, maybe I needed it more than Di. She's still angry with dad for not letting her go for the V.A.D. like Faith. I'd never tell her, but I think he was right to do it. I don't mean because of you – I think of you in this war and I think of one of Carl's chameleon creatures shedding its skin and adapting –but because of something dad said._

 _He had come up to help with packing for Swallowgate if we wanted it, and Di had one last go at talking him round. I didn't mean to listen, but I had my hands full of tissue paper and dresses and couldn't help it. I won't relay the whole of the conversation as the odds favour you knowing it all already, but halfway though Di's petition dad sat down at my desk, leaned back in the chair and said, 'stop a minute, Di-mine and tell me why you must go.'_

 _That brought her up short. I rustled the tissue paper with a vengeance to remind them I was there but they were past noticing, I think. Di just stood with her hands balled at her sides and blinked at him._

 _'What do you mean, why?' she said._

 _'I mean,' said dad, 'Faith_ _needs_ _to go. Anyone can see that looking at her. It's not just that Jem's over there somewhere –though I guess that's part of it –it's that she can't help going. Do you see? But you wanting to go, that feels different. As if it was the first concrete thing to offer you a purpose and you clutched at it. I might be wrong, I have been before –so I thought I'd ask. Why?'_

 _Di couldn't tell him –she always comes up short when she feels something keenly. This was different though. When Walter died, you know, she hadn't any words because there wasn't anything to say that would touch even the surface of the way she felt about it, but this…I watched her mouth working and the words eluding her. I've never tried so hard to compel someone to speak as I did then Well she wanted it so_ _badly_ _–it would have been churlish not to try._

 _'We need people here to, you know,' dad said and kissed her forehead. He went out after that, and I saw that the offer of help had been a pretence after all –he'd left grandmother Blythe's cameos and tortoiseshell combs on the desk, you'll remember he always intended Di and I to have as wedding tokens. I suppose he thought we needed them now. If you happen to think of it, you might tell him I've taken to wearing the combs for luck. They give me something of Avonlea –Ingleside too –to hold onto here, and I'm glad of it._

 _In happier news, the Merediths were up for Faith's graduation, this having been pushed forward, since a veritable cotillion of that years' girls have decided to try nursing. I'd hate to cheat Rosemary of her gossip, so I won't dwell_ _too_ _much on their stay, but suffice it to say they were as warm and wholesome as ever. The highlight was little Bruce's seizing of a butter-tart fresh out of the oven (no, I don't know how or where Mara got the things to make them) and tearing off into the garden with it to eat among the sycamores. I don't mind telling you_ _that_ _as I feel certain that Rosemary_ _won't_ _. She was horrified by such unapologetic impishness before strangers (and privately blames Norman Douglas for encouraging it by preaching that all little boys ought to be devils occasionally, or so she said to me after the fact)._

 _When they left at the end of a golden weekend, Faith's departure loomed larger than ever. It was softened a bit by the fact that we got one last occasion to see Mara perform, all of us together. We lost an enchanted two hours to choosing dresses and pinning each other's hair. I wore my gold moire with the embossed yoke, but Di wore a green sarsenet that made her look like a Dryad of a willow tree. I pinned grandmother's cameo at her throat and couldn't help saying, 'Aren't you glad you'll be here for more nights like this?'_

 _There must have been a charm in the air because mums, she relented and agreed with me. She even said as she pinned my hair in a Grecian knot, 'It would have been a wrench to go so far from you, Catkin, and I'd have missed your economies.'_

 _We set out into a hazy moonstruck night, full of throbbing crickets and Whip-poor-wills. Shirley met us at the Convocation hall, arms full of mayflowers, which he took the liberty of tucking into our hair –the ones he didn't put by for Mara, I mean._

 _As ever when I have cause to see or read_ _Much Ado about Nothing_ _I was reminded why it was the play that captured my heart in girlhood. This was no exception –and I was sorry you couldn't see it –because Mara's Beatrice fairly teemed with energy and fire. There's always been a spark in her –it tends to slip out in moments of playfulness at Swallowgate or in exasperation at Next Door's garden –but I don't think we'd ever seen it so effectively capitalised on before. Poppy's right, I think, asserting the tutors in the drama school won't make that mistake again because_ _Much Ado_ _flew by with as much crackle, wit and zest as anyone could hope for._

 _It was no chore to see the run out. For a little while we lived for it. The hard thing was letting Faith go when it was over. We made rather an occasion of her last evening, sitting up all night over a bonfire spiced with elf wort and reminiscing. We even gave up a bit of our precious sugar to turn the flames green for a spell –we've mostly gone off it in tea and it's well past porridge season so that's not nearly the sacrifice it could be. The sun came too quickly and we walked with Faith as far as the train station and waved her out of sight long after the train had gone and the whistle faded, taking with it even that smell of burning coal._

 _Since then the first month without Faith has been and gone –and it was_ _hard_ _. The girls who pin hopes weren't made for separations from one another, I think. They_ _hurt_ _. We're beginning –reluctantly – to bear it though. Well there isn't much choice, is there?_

 _The first week was worst. Faith's departure reopened Di's hurt at dad, and Poppy wandered the house like a ghost. Faced with the reality of her going, we did our best to retain the flavour of our friendship and for a while kept up our evening Red Cross Work much as if Faith were still there. But her absence was a palpable thing, like wind rushing through a hole in a wall left unmended, and in the end we had to give it up as a bad job. No one knew what to say around her absence, does that make sense?_

 _Then the morning of our second day without her Poppy came downstairs red-eyed and obviously running on the energy that comes of lack of sleep. I thought I'd heard noise coming from her room in the night, but had put it down to more of Faith's audible lack of presence, mixed in with all the usual noises of the house. Well you always_ _do_ _notice them after a change, don't you? That second evening though I thought I heard sobbing, and I must have, because the next sound I heard was Mara on the stairs followed by 'May I come in, Mouse?'_

 _That seemed to work; at any rate they hunkered down under Poppy's quilt –or so I assume –and lay there whispering long into the night, and on into the early morning. I lay awake listening to the rustle of their whispers long after the moon set. Mara came down the night after that too, and the one after that, and the one after that, until it got to be such a habit that a month later Mara has moved her things downstairs and has taken Faith's place in Poppy's room._

 _The turret room we keep open for Ruthie, though she is round less and less lately. I feel rather badly about that. It wasn't so long ago that I'd wake up to find Di gone and hear the two of them talking in the sitting room, the low susurration of the conversation and the smell of cocoa rising up the stairs like feathers. It had begun to get so that Mara and Di were starting to say Ruthie ought to move in outright once Faith had gone –a notion by the by, that Faith thoroughly endorsed, thinking it would make our lives more comfortable and fill the gap she'd leave a little. Ruthie was, as ever, hopelessly indecisive on this point. More than once Mara and Di convinced her, only for Ruthie to change her mind the next minute, certain that if she came she would get underfoot and we would cease to love her._

 _Naturally I was never keen on the idea, which is why I feel badly about it now. I know perfectly well it was selfish of me to resent Ruthie's intrusion, that that was my own private Iago whispering to me that once Di had come to_ _me_ _first with her secrets, that she would have woken_ _me_ _up and whispered them to me, rather than hazarding the cold floor and the unfired hearth to talk with Ruthie. Of course, all things being contrary, now that Ruthie's retreated I'm cross with her for_ _not_ _moving in, is that horrid? No, don't answer that, I know it is. The Iago is back trying to tell me that if Ruthie didn't know that Di had always struggled to keep friends, didn't know that even the ones that were sweet –I'm thinking of Laura Carr –were prevented from sticking by circumstance, then she wasn't –isn't? –_ _nearly_ _good enough for my Di. This is the height of unreasonableness, since short of Di telling her, how could Ruthie possibly know all that? All of which is to say that I ought to be forgiving of Ruthie, I know this in my bones, but I'm not because–I don't know. I've tried and even in a letter to you, mums, I can't articulate good, coherent reason that holds water, though I have a strong suspicion that were he here, Jerry might say it was to do with being only human at the end of the day._

 _I'm comforted by the fact that I have an ally in Poppy though. Our Mouse, who must surely be sweetness personified, hasn't got on comfortably with Ruthie since she failed to appear on our doorstep in the aftermath of Walter dying. Di and I understood that –you would have too, mums, if you'd seen her, heart positively bleeding from the sleeve she'd pinned it to –but Poppy either can't or won't. I tend to think it's the latter, because she's forgiven the rest of us any number of trespasses in the time we've known her._

 _Now to the actual substance of your latest letter –Susan got all that from a letter of Shirley's? I want to say I'm surprised, perhaps for the sake of your motherly nerves I ought to, but the fact is I know Susan, and Shirley, and more than that I've been living with Mara, so it had vaguely occurred to me. Not seriously, you understand. It was like this; we were sitting on the floor sewing the other day –gowns without backs on this occasion if you want to know –and fell to talking about the things we could least stand to have happen. I suppose that looks ghoulish on paper, but it wasn't at all like that to us. I said I thought I couldn't bear if anything should happen to prevent Jerry recovering, and Di said it was the thought of all poetry going out of the world that undid her. Mara though, said 'It's Mouse's optimism I can't bear the thought of losing. Without it I think I'd go to pieces.'_

 _The thing is, I'd never thought of it at all like that, but once Mara had said it I couldn't get it out of my head for the rightness of it. We do all rely on Poppy's unfailing sunniness to get us through the worst crises._

 _Anyway, having said her piece, Mara went to pour out more tea, found we'd exhausted the pot and took it away to brew more._

 _'Mara copes remarkably well herself,' said Di, 'but then it may just be me looking in from the outside and thinking everyone but me gets it right, because Faith was like that too.'_

 _It was the oddest thing, mums, because I certainly didn't_ _mean_ _to say it, and I'd never thought it through consciously, but in one of those moments where the brain clicks into place I heard myself say, 'yes, but Faith was engaged.'_

 _Di's eyes went wide at that, and she said, 'you never think Mara is.'_

 _I said of the two of us Di was more likely to know that sort of thing than I was, and Poppy before either of us. Di said she hadn't been aware that Mara even_ _liked_ _anyone that way, at which point Poppy stumbled across us and said with most un-Poppy-ish incredulity as she unpacked her sewing, 'You don't mean to tell me you hadn't guessed? She and Shirley have been circling each other like moth and flame for months. I keep waiting for the moth to catch.'_

 _'Which is which?' said Di._

 _'It depends on the moment,' said Poppy. 'I'd have said something to you about it before but I thought you knew. It's been old hat to Faith and I ever since that Christmas Shirley came up to visit.'_

 _Poppy as I too often forget is frighteningly clever, for all we pet her and call her Mouse. If she's right -and I tend to think she must be - you can date the start of that particular love affair to Christmas of 1916, or thereabout. I don't suppose_ _you_ _need reassuring, mums –anyone who can talk Faerie is a kindred spirit to you – but as Susan will, you might tell her that Shirley couldn't have settled on anyone more wholesomely good than Mara._

 _Its funny, the more I think it over, the more right it feels, though when he was first up visiting I hardly noticed them together at all –I hadn't especially noticed_ _lately_ _– but then I don't suppose I would have done under the circumstances, especially given Mara's uncanny knack for making herself vanish. I don't mean she's small –she's far and away the tallest of us –it's a theatre trick of hers, receding into the background of a scene and handing over the performance to its rightful owner. I'm told by classmates of hers I've chatted with that it's an incredibly generous thing in an actress, and almost unheard of in the ones –as with Mara –who are really talented. The thing of it though is that sometimes Mara will do it off-stage, as if she's handing over the business of living to other people, does that make sense? Naturally she goes on living herself, but one forgets she's there, until she does something to make herself felt, like going to comfort Poppy back at the beginning of May. The point is, I think she must have done that when Shirley visited that Christmas, vanished herself into the woodwork and become small and negligible unless you were watching for her. Which, I suppose, would be exactly the sort of thing to draw Shirley's notice, though bear in mind it's always been Jem's heart I've been able to read like a book, not Nutkin's. Susan will be able to tell you if I'm right though._

 _Anyway, as you'll find, once you unravel the start, it's easy enough to go on. They were together all those weeks we were stranded at Anchorage, and he's at Swallowgate often enough lately. I never noticed back at Christmas –wee Maisie took up too much of my time for that –and I can't say I'd noticed since. Now of course I wonder how I ever missed it. Poppy wasn't wrong with her talk of moths and flames._

 _While we're on the subject of romances, I happen to think your advice to Rilla_ _was_ _accurate, whatever your subsequent misgivings, though I too baulk a bit at the idea of Ken Ford engaged to baby Rilla. Being generous though, this war has stretched the souls of so many of us, I see no reason to suppose it hasn't stretched his too –and I think if he really did ask Rilla to save her kisses for him then you can feel comfortably sure he meant it._

 _Love to all at home, but I'm enclosing a kiss with this letter, mums, and that's for you._

 _Nan_


	20. Chapter 20

_With thanks, always to those of you reading and/or reviewing -and a happy Christmas when it comes._

* * *

Mara found a distinctly red-eyed Poppy curled up on the window seat. She had made herself small, Mara saw at a glance, making a shield of one of its corners and squashing herself into it, a much-abused letter held tight in one small, childish hand.

'Can you tell me about it?' she asked, worming her way onto the window seat beside Poppy. It wasn't difficult to manage; Poppy was small at the best of times. Curled inward on herself she almost managed what Prospero promised his audience and melted into air, into thin air. She coaxed Poppy out of her corner and pulled her head, darkly gleaming in the flush of the early-morning sunlight, onto her shoulder and smoothed it out, easing last night's tangles and kinks away.

'I don't know,' said Poppy into Mara's collar, a bit doubtfully, Mara thought.

'Will you hate me if I say a terribly unchristian thing, Mara?'

'I shouldn't think it likely. Try me.'

Poppy did not. She went on worrying the letter between her fingers.

'Is one of your brothers going away?' Mara hoped this was it, because if it was anything worse, she wasn't sure she knew just then how to be helpful. She was still tense with the effort of living on the knife-edge of dread expectation herself. Alec had gone to the front, as threatened, in January, and while he wrote with as much regularity as could be reasonably expected, the spaces in-between letters did nothing to lessen her terror that they would some day stop forever. She leaned her head against the cool pane of the window to clear it and began calling to mind the names of Poppy's brothers, an exercise of memory Poppy relieved her of prematurely though by saying, 'Oh –it isn't that. I think I could bear that. So many of them have gone, you know, that we've mostly got used to it. One more, or two, that wouldn't make so much difference. But over Easter someone wrote dad to ask could he send the horses for cavalry, and then someone else actually paid us a call to ask had he made up his mind. He hadn't –then –but he has now, and he says,' here Poppy brandished the letter, 'that he's agreed to give them up. I know it's beastly, me caring more about those animals than Teddy or Robbie or the others, but Mara, _they knew what they were getting into_.'

Poppy flung this last statement at her defiantly, lifting her head, and apparently bracing herself against Mara's disapproval. When it didn't come, she blinked wide grey eyes owlishly and went on. 'It's not that I don't love them,' said Poppy, still with that defiant edge to her voice, 'I do. All I mean is that if any of them is killed, they'll know what's done it and why. They chose to go, after all. But the horses, Mara, we raised them for ploughshares and carriages, riders too, not guns and mud and God knows what else. And they'll die without ever knowing, thinking maybe we're punishing them for something, and they won't understand…' She collapsed against Mara's chest her head nestled in the place between chin and throat, and there dissolved into so many incoherent tears.

'This unchristian thing I'm supposed to hold against you,' said Mara lightly, 'that would be your love of your horses, would it?'

'I did tell you it was idiotic,' said Poppy into Mara's collarbone.

'I was going to say I thought it entirely justified, Mouse,' said Mara, stroking Poppy's dark-haired head with both hands. 'We don't love by halves. You don't love Teddy or Mark or –it's Robbie that's your especial pet, isn't it? –or any of the others less for caring about the welfare of those animals. Knowing you, I bet you brought most of them into the world, or had a hand in it.'

'Most of the ones they want,' said Poppy thickly. Mara fished one-handed in the pocket of her skirt and came up with a handkerchief, which she handed Poppy.

'The thing of it is,' she said as she stroked Poppy's hair, 'if you weep for the horses, there's a chance you might stop.'

'Yes,' said Poppy between snuffles into the handkerchief, 'but –you-are –good –to –me –to –say –so.'

'Well you engender goodness, Mouse. Does no one tell you?'

'Now and again,' said Poppy. Faintly, she offered Mara a smile.

'Good. That saves me having to have words with Peter.'

'Mara you wouldn't!' Poppy tried to sound indignant but she ended by laughing.

'I _would_ ,' said Mara resolutely, 'if I thought it needful. But it's not, so that's all right, and I've made you laugh. I'm glad, Mouse.'

'Me too,' said Poppy, once she had recovered. 'Trust you to work a thing like that. You are not allowed to go away, _a charaid_ , have you got that? You. Are. Not. Allowed. To. Go. Away.'

'You're all right, Mouse. I won't go anywhere.'

'That's just what Faith said, you know.'

'Yes, but Faith's a nurse to her fingertips, was even before the war probably and will be afterwards. I'm not. I'm an actress, and always have been. It's silly, and frivolous, but it's me and I could as easily give it up as breathing. I won't be rushing off in a blaze of purpose, Mouse. I belong here, at least until the world carves out a place for me.'

'That's all right then. I'm glad.'

'Me too,' said Mara, rubbing at her sleeve where it covered the old jagged scar that vouched for Faith's nurse's instinct. 'Me too.'

It was in the balmy early days of June that the shot that Mara had been dreading so long hit its mark. It came at midday, silent as an arrow, just as the girls who pinned hopes were beginning to make the transition from sewing to thinking about dinner. They were not expecting callers, most people having gone home to stay for the summer. There was Ruthie, but she had long since ceased knocking for admittance to Swallowgate, instead letting herself in when the door was unlatched. Shirley was nearby too, but at the moment they were more likely to observe him flying over the city than they were to see him in person. Similarly Peter was in town for the summer, explaining –not for the first time –to People Who Mattered why the withering of his left leg to polio would make him no good as a soldier, but he tended to forewarn Swallowgate of his visits.

'Perhaps the post came early,' said Di, 'and he thought we'd like to have it. It's happened before now. Run and see, Mouse.'

Poppy went, and afterwards could not have said who was more surprised, the russet-haired lad on the doorstep or herself by the unexpectedness of their meeting. It only lasted a moment and then Poppy saw him as the double to Mara that he was; the red tints Mara's hair only hinted at by firelight the lad had got in spades, but their eyes were the same, and the way they looked with them. Realising, she gestured him into the sitting room, where he stood like a stricken deer on finding them all together. Poppy and the others began packing away their sewing, but Mara stayed them with a look.

'It's all right,' she said, 'if it's something difficult, I'd rather you were here.' Then to the boy blinking dazedly in the middle of the room, 'I never thought to expect you, Alastair. Did I miss word of your calling?'

The boy called Alastair, who was surely no older than 16, shrugged self-consciously and shook his head.

'I came to tell you,' he said, shifting his weight from foot to uncertain foot and scrubbing the back of his neck with one hand. 'Da was for writing it down in the weekly letter and sending it, but I thought –I mean Mam wanted –it's not that I wouldn't have come, only –'

'Alastair,' said with equal parts reluctance and sisterly severity as she took him in hand, 'has Alec been killed then?'

That froze Poppy and the others, but it served to animate Alistair. He jerked out of Mara's grasp, managing to look at once relieved and startled at having his news snatched from him. One hand went to the back of his neck in agitation, the other disappeared into the depths of his coat, surfacing with a piece of grubby, unassuming paper.

'Da thought you'd maybe not believe it if you didn't see the telegram,' said Alastair, holding it out to Mara as one would offer a loaded pistol. 'But you've been waiting, _a chuisle,_ and that's worse, maybe.'

'Something like that,' said Mara stiffly, declining to touch the telegram with its news of the death of Alec.

'Next time I see a thing like that –and I hope to God I don't –you're to tell me it isn't true, Alastair, do you promise?'

'No,' he said, shoving the telegram awkwardly back into his pocket so that the corners stuck out. 'Even if my saying it could make it impossible, I'll no argue with a ghost, Sal.'

Belatedly he realised what he'd said, and braced himself against a flood that didn't come. 'I'm sorry,' he said clumsily, his arms jutting disjointedly from his person as he wavered on the matter of whether or not to hug her –Alec would have done. Standing uncertainly in the sitting room with its collection of shepherdesses and end tables, the girls who pinned hopes and their everlasting sewing, he looked younger and more frightened than ever. Mara got a hand under his arm, notwithstanding his having grown a good head taller than herself since Christmas –and led him forcibly to the scrubbed pine table, where she installed him in a chair.

'Sit down,' she said, 'and tell me how the others are. What of Cait–she was always keen on him from a girl. And Mam's all right? The babies? What have they been told? When did you leave to come here? You'll not have eaten, you'll have something now?'

Apparently uncertain which aspect of this volley to address first, Alastair dodged in favour of a question of his own. 'You sure you'll not read it?'

'Alastair,' said Mara dryly, 'I have been waiting for that telegram to come for months, _a muirninn_. I know what it says. I don't need to read it to make it so. Leave it now, and eat a bit.'

'Can't,' he said, 'Mam's not stopped cooking since –well. Since word came I suppose I mean, and –'

'Alastair,' in tones of awful calm, 'I will not have your only visit here be on account of Alec dying. He'd hate the thought of it. I'm not sure I don't. Eat a bit.'

She set a teacup in front of him and he twisted its saucer between his fingers, unsure of what to say now the worst was over. Neither was Mara. The air had gone out of the room and left only the sun-warm fug of summer with its heady smells of sycamore, next door's roses and the aching silence. It was Nan who bridged the gulf of this last to ask after wee Maisie, which topic Alastair fell upon like a lifeline. He poured out a story of her latest adventure, which had involved walking the wall of the harbour pier. Nan, either working from memory or possessed of a medium's prescience and divining the impossibility of Mara's talking about anything with the first heavy weight of the news on her, reciprocated with one of her economies. In this one Lord Harrington was accompanying the body of a comrade-in-arms back to its family, and became embroiled in a mystery concerning long-vanished emeralds along the way. It was far and away the best of the economies to date and worked the way a charm was supposed to, unstopping the conversational void.

'I meant to ask,' said Alastair when Lord Harrington had seen the body to its resting place and restored the emeralds to their rightful owner, 'about me coming down like this, Mara. I don't want –I mean, could I stay a bit? Would you mind?'

Mara, clearing plates from the table, caught this request and looked to the others for opposition. Finding none, she nodded.

'But go into town and tell them where you've gone.'

'They sent me to tell you!' he said, indignant.

'And how long does that take, _ghille ruaidh_? No, let them know you're here safe and you can stay as long as suits you.'

When Alastair didn't move, Mara set the plates down and said more gently, 'I'd have had Alec do the same, were it the other way 'round, if it decides you at all.'

Apparently it did; Alastair unstuck himself from his chair, kissed his sister's cheek and got as far as the hall before remembering he hadn't the least idea where the nearest phone was.

'There's one at Patterson Street,' said Di, declining for once to challenge Mara over the kitchen. 'I'll show you. They won't mind your borrowing it.'

Mara let them get as far as the step this time before calling from the kitchen window, ' _Thalla le Dia_!'

Alastair opened his mouth to challenge this misplaced prayer, to say that he was coming back, then changed his mind, apparently deciding that it was directed not at him but at the fetch she had seen moons ago. That it was said dry-eyed and collected was a revelation that seemed to unsettle him even more than the imparting of Alec's death had done, and from the look of the others, it wasn't only him.

'The thing I wish for more than anything world,' said Nan, threading her arms around Mara's waist and laying a cheek against her spine, 'is that you had never have found out what it feels like.'

'Too late for that,' said Mara, half-turning and returning Nan's hug, 'much better wish Mouse never has cause to know it.'

Nan shivered. 'Oh yes,' she said earnestly, 'most especially for Mouse.'

Much later, when the moon was high and the house full of the whispers of its sleepless occupants, Poppy came and burrowed under the quilt next to her, radiating warmth and smelling of lily-of-the-valley, yeast and sun.

'I hadn't realised you'd done the bread today,' said Mara to the wall she was facing, 'I thought we had enough to last until tomorrow at least.'

'Mm. I thought I'd get ahead if I could. Besides, that was before we had guests. You know, _a leannan_ , you are allowed to grieve. No one's going to think the less of you for it.'

'It isn't that,' said Mara. 'I haven't your horses to weep for, Mouse. If I start, I won't ever be able to stop.'


	21. Chapter 21

_With thanks to all of you reading and/or reviewing, especially over the chaos of holidays! A happy New Year from Scotland and a promise to write you happier chapters then!_

* * *

'He was my brother too,' said Alastair as he and Di walked through the old wood. It had been her idea to get out of the house; he was clearly restless in the face of his sister's grief, which manifested in a dizzying whirl of activity, and Di, who had felt much the same and that not long ago, knew what a trial it was to have to contend with other people until you knew how to be around them again.

'And I can't –I mean if she won't –' he gave up in frustration and seized a protruding limb of a golden birch and jerked it live and green from the trunk of the tree. Then, extracting a penknife from some recess of his person began to whittle it.

'Alec,' he said carefully, 'could make her greet –could make her cry. I don't mean that quite the way it sounds, only –well maybe you'll have noticed –Mara stoppers things, bottles them.'

In fact Di had, largely because she did it too, and she made a faint noise of affirmation back in her throat, wary of interruption.

'Alec could unstopper them,' he said, a tendril of golden birch unravelling from the blade of the knife. 'Alec had the trick of it and I never thought to ask because…oh any of number of things really. We were rare lucky and shadows were few, that was one reason but mostly it was enough that Alec knew. Years and I didn't think I'd need the knowing of it, and now he's gone and I do, and I can't make her weep and that matters because it's one thing for a girl to greet –people die and that's sort of expected. It's not the same for boys –save they catch it off the lasses, that's different. Or perhaps its only home as is like that?' He looked wide-eyed at Di, eyes like drowned blue planets. Afraid to break his train of thought with speech, Di gave a small consolatory nod, that no, it had been no different in the Glen.

'And if she _won't_ , said Alastair feelingly, 'and she won't because Mara never has been one for greeting – except could Alec make her, which he isn't here to do – then I can't either because it doesn't work like that.' He gave the switch an experimental twitch. It struck against a lilac bush and white petals gusted like rain to the ground. Finding it worked, he gave the switch another snap and the white blossoms of the lilac shredded like ribbons. Di put a cautious arm around his shoulders with difficulty; he was built like a cedar sapling, at once sturdy and hardly there at all, and his shoulders would keep twitching with the effort of casting the switch. The lilac bush was rapidly dissolving into streamers, the scent of the blossoms thick and cloying on the air.

'I think sometimes,' she said, with a thought for Walter, 'you do it because to cry is to confess the thing has happened, and once you do that it can't ever be taken back. When you cry over a death it becomes true, and for it to be true means that they're gone and you can't go after them –and it doesn't matter how sweet and good the promises of the hereafter are, they aren't _now_. Now though is almost always when you need them because when you're that close, close enough to see ghosts before the event or intuiting the meaning of a poem they've written, it's because they're an extension of you and you can't imagine living without them any more than you could living without a torso. You need a body to go on living, and you need them. And so you don't cry, or give in to the hurt of it, because then it's happened and there's no way back.'

'But then,' Alastair said reasonably, 'why not just _say_ all of that?'

'It's easier to say when you've lived with it for a while,' said Di. 'I don't think, in the aftermath of a loss we're inclined to yield with grace to reason –is that what the poet says?'

' _And bow and accept the end / of love or a season_.' Alastair seemed to grin in spite of himself, the coruscation of the smile fleeting as a starburst. The breath of the lilacs was headier and muskier than ever and Di saw that he had run out of stalks to desiccate. The tree stood bowed, branches low and blooms in tatters, the white scintilla of them gusseting in a sussurrating whirlwind at their feet as the breeze caught them. As they stood watching them the shimmer of a smile vanished, and turning the switch between his fingers he said, 'But no one likes to do that –and if I can't take the sting out of it for her, then what do I do?'

'You stop trying to catch her, and let yourself be caught,' said Di. 'That way you'll be there when Mara _does_ call on you. In the meantime though, you weep if you need to. I won't let on.'

* * *

'You've something in your hair,' said Nan, reaching across Di and extracting a white petal from her hair. 'What's it from, a trillium?'

'Lilac more likely,' said Di. She reached for it and brushed it under her nose, trying to catch the scent of it. Definitely lilac.

'They bloomed so early this year that I thought they'd all have wilted by now. I hadn't realised there were any left,' Nan said. Di, intently rootling among the contents of her night-table only shrugged.

'I expect there aren't now,' she said, surfacing with a worn envelope. Di felt the slight pressure on her shoulder and smelled apple-blossom as Nan bent over her shoulder to read the address.

'Is that…' Nan began, and then the weight on Di's shoulder and the smell of apple-blossom faded as Nan retreated to her side of the room. 'I never realised he wrote to you at the end.'

'I didn't want to read it then. I wanted some part of Walter to still be there, to be here. Alive. As long as I don't read it he is –was.' Carefully, and with suitable awe of ghosts, Di took the curve of her storkbill scissors to the sealant. It was stiff at first, then came away in a crackle and rustle of paper, and there was the blue paper Walter had favoured, his beautiful, right-sloping handwriting shimmering in the late-afternoon sunlight. The clatter of Nan's heels against the floor penetrated through the murk of this embalmed memory and Di resurfaced sufficiently to say, 'Don't you _dare_ go away. If I'm going to fall to pieces, someone will have to reassemble them.'

'All right,' said Nan, and retraced her steps to perch on the edge of Di's bed, her body at right-hand angles with the lone star quilt. 'I'll be here.'

'In fact,' said Di, 'shall I read it to you? Even Walter's prose read like poetry, it seems a crime not to read it aloud.' She felt Nan's hand weave its way into her hair, where it curled like a kitten against the nape of her neck, the apple-blossom smell of her wrist tethering Di to her.

'If you like,' she said, her fingers unthreading the knots in Di's neck. 'But you mustn't feel obligated.'

'It's not an obligation,' Di assured her, and began to read.

 _There is a hunter's moon tonight. I don't mean those bleeding orange moons of October and harvest, but a crescent, Diana's arrow –your moon. I've been watching it ever since it rose, all poised and taut, and feeling you very near. Nearer than usual, I mean. Do you know, I've carried a piece of you with me all this last year? Nothing so tangible as a coil of hair or a handkerchief you embossed –though I expect somewhere I_ _have_ _got such a thing –but your voice all trimmed with fire and gold, and fluid as water. It's in the wind tonight, or else there's an echo of it deep in my bones that makes me wish you were here to embolden me. You always could, Diana._

 _You'll forgive me not calling you Doss this evening, won't you? It's not done in anger, only a great sense that time's wearing thin, and if it is an end unravelling in front of me, I want it to be your name at the corner of my mouth –your proper name and not the one I gave to you. Strange, isn't it, the power inherent in names? To use one is almost to enthral the other person, to contract one to make the bearer yours (mother always lengthened ours in exasperation, do you remember?). So you mustn't be Doss this evening because if anything happens –and I think it surely must –I don't want you to be always bound to me._

 _But what I was going to say before philosophy rushed in with all its meditation on names and their magic was a memory of Ingleside. It was back when I had toothache, do you remember? Susan had tried some poultice or other, and mother had recommended the pet cure-all of one Rachel Lynde, and Faith thought nothing would do but her old plush elephant to take the sting out of it. None of it worked, not the Lynde cure-all nor the Baker poultice, and dad was determined I should have the tooth out –only I wouldn't because I was afraid it would hurt. We went on like that for days, and at the height of it, I was lying in bed and I couldn't see, much less sleep, for the ache running through my jaw, you crept in like an eel and pinched me hard under the ear, do you remember? I was about to let out a wail like a banshee but before I could the hurt had passed._

 _'That's just what it would be like with the tooth,' you said as you wormed your way under my quilt. It was that old green Bear Tracks one vintage of Grandmother Blythe and I remember I thought your hair on it looked like a rope of wild tiger lilies. I didn't say so in case you pinched me again, but I do remember filing the thought away for a poem._

 _It wasn't long after that that I defended Faith from Dan Reese, and I remember saying that that was what decided me when I told dad about the tooth, and it's not that it_ _wasn't_ _so much as there was no way of saying that it was you pinching me that had convinced me that wouldn't land you in trouble and make me feel foolish._

 _We're going over the top the day after tomorrow, and so I'm wishing you here to pinch me again and tell me it will be no worse that –gone in the glimmering of an eye. I think I could go bravely to face any doom knowing that. Only it isn't my tooth aching this time, Diana-mine, it's my soul, and not only mine; its writ on the faces of the other men too, the soul-ache and heartsickness of the war. I shouldn't say it, but if I don't I worry I may never; we've seen ourselves too often in those other men and can't unsee it. I suppose the man I took a bayonet to not long ago was someone's Jem, or Jerry –or perhaps their Walter, do you think? Have I left some mirror to yourself unmoored, unanchored? These things weigh heavily tonight. I trouble you with them not to hurt you but because I find I must unburden myself to someone. Mother wants –do I mean needs? –to remember the good in the world, and Rilla needs me to be brave, but you could always read my heart, Diana and I'm so desperately wishing you here that I find nothing will ease me but to gift it inkily to you for safekeeping._

 _I've hardly taken a rose-glass to the future, but if I'm right and this is goodbye, I hate to think of you hollow and aching for me. I'm just selfish enough to worry that you might. It's funny, but at the last Rossetti –who you know I've never loved –is right after all; I'd far rather think of you laughing. Laugh then, and smile, and sing when you can manage it. But above all live –and gladly –for me._

The little room overlooking the Swallowgate garden was thick with feeling. Even the birds were silent. Clumsily, Di refolded Walter's parting letter and a sheet of paper, wafer thin and worn fell through her fingers. Still with one hand on Di's neck, Nan bent over and retrieved it from under the nightstand where it fluttered naked and exposed. She held it out to Di, but Di shook her head; she felt at once cripplingly fragile and bone-achingly tired.

'I can't read any more,' she managed, and the words felt sluggish against her soft palate. 'Would you?'

The hand on Di's neck tensed in hesitation. 'It's a poem,' she said, 'are you sure you wouldn't rather–'

'Please,' said Di heavily and laid her head on Nan's lap. Dimly she felt the expansion of Nan's ribs and the swell of her diaphragm, heard Nan's tremulous inhalation as she began.

 _I am coming the long way home,  
_ _Across the verge of memory,  
_ _The road of yester-year,  
_ _When the days were long and golden,  
_ _And the hours disappeared  
_ _In whirlwinds. Do you remember?_

 _Long dappled grass and soaring skylarks mattered,  
_ _I think so did the trivial things;  
_ _You wore trilliums in you hair, and we chattered  
_ _Lying in the canopy of the trees, of dreams,  
_ _And rhymes and schemes and things we had no notion of,  
_ _But cherished even so._

 _I'd wish one last shared sunset,  
_ _The light of it lacing your hair with flame,  
_ _To cherish. But then I'd have to choose,  
_ _Unpick the weave of history and name a favourite.  
_ _There's too much gold between us, too much good  
_ _For that. Carry me close in the weave of your heart,  
_ _The pause between breaths, in the wing of a prayer –  
_ _Look to me then, and always, I'll be there._

'He wasn't angry,' said Di into the crease of Nan's skirt. 'If he wrote that, he wasn't angry.'

She could feel Nan's fingers through her hair, tracing the curve of her skull, calloused at the pads and tender in their ministrations.

'How could he have been angry?' said Nan, sweeping Di's tumbled hair from her eyes and away from her forehead. 'You were the twin of his soul –he always said so.'

'Knowing's –not –the –same –as –believing,' Di said. Still Nan's fingers combed through her hair, the scent of apple blossom lingering on them and weaving, so Di imagined into the strands of her hair. Something in Di turned over at the smell of it, because Walter had loved apples, had made himself sick on them once, and the memory of it, coming on the heels of his last poem, unstopped her. The dam she had so carefully built gave way at it's foundation and a year's worth of loss welled up in her heart as much as her eyes, and Di cried as she had not let herself cry since Walter had died, for the years they had had and would never have, for the hurts and prickles of life, and most of all for the closeness that even his poetry in all its skill could not measure and that nothing could ever give her back. She felt the loss of it as a great hollowing out of her chest through her eyes. And all the while Nan smoothed her hair and held her, the smell of apple blossom on her wrists, and sharp and sweet in Di's nose.

'He isn't coming back,' Di heard herself say afterwards, through the headache and the stuffed nose that stood testament to her tears. She had known it all this last year, but she hadn't yet said it, and the cost of the admission was a painful, soul-rending ache.

'I miss him and he isn't -won't ever come back.' She had run out of tears, but a stray sob rose up in her anyway, sticking painfully in her larynx. Nan slid down the bed then and onto the floor, engulfing her sister in a bear hug.

'Darling girl,' said Nan into her hair, 'he could never wholly leave you. Not ever.'

* * *

 _Di and Alastair are earlier quoting 'Reluctance' by Robert Frost._


	22. Chapter 22

_Well I do't know what you'll make of this, and it isn't the chapter I'd intended to give you but apparently its the one that needed writing. Needless to say after much s_ _withering and hesitation on my part, it's also the chapter you're getting to read._

 _Thank you always for reading and/or reviewing._

* * *

The longest day blazed into being that year, setting the sky on fire at the unlawful hour of half past four in the morning. It crept under doorframes and streamed through windows in ribbons like a firebrand, so that Mara said drowsily to Poppy as she combed out her hair, 'Did you and Faith never think of curtains?'

'No, we did,' said Poppy with a surplus of sunniness for the hour of the larks, 'but then we remembered it meant more sewing.'

'So it does,' said Mara, fixing pins into her hair against the unruliness of the day.

'I take it you're not offering then?'

'No,' said Mara.

* * *

They were in the sitting room tackling taped bed jackets when Shirley called with news of the air raid over London. Yesterday's mist had long since burnt away in curls like incense, leaving the brightness of the day to stand at dazzling odds with the grimness of the news.

'You're quite sure?' said Nan on more than one occasion, and confronted with the unshakeable certainty of this fact asked instead, 'Are they at least making progress reclaiming the Belgian coast?'

'Not that I've heard,' said Shirley, sitting down on the least squashy of the chairs. The air crackled with disquiet.

'Is that…'he squinted a little at the paper they were pinning the cotton to.

'Newspaper,' said Mara for him. 'Faith's idea. She thought the clothes would fit the men just the same even should the ink bleed.'

'She did,' said Nan, 'which has reminded me –I owe her a letter.' So saying she gathered her sewing imperfectly together and picked her way through the collection of shepherdess-laden end tables and her friend's sprawled limbs, taking the stairs two and three at a time. Poppy made no pretence at excuse only murmured to Mara as she went, 'It's all right, I shan't stay and play gooseberry.' She went, sewing draped over her arm like an old-world train, and when the air came alive again it wasn't with disquiet but electricity.

'I'm sorry about Alec,' said Shirley warily. He was acutely aware that if nothing changed, if no one spoke, the room would go up like tinder and take them with it.

'You did say,' said Mara, but she had stopped sewing.

'You're all right? At the risk of asking a redundant question?'

'I –there's tea if you want it,' said Mara. She rose, presumably to fetch it as he went towards her with a half-formed thought of stopping her. The heat of the day and the unwieldy sewing had made her hair brittle and teased strands free of their pins. Impulsively he brushed these back in to place.

'Never mind about that,' said Shirley.

'You're sure?'

'Certain.'

Shirley had got one hand on her elbow when he intervened in the affair of the tea, it took only a half turn on her part to fall forward into his arms. For a startlingly brief moment he expected tears. When Mara lifted her head to look at him though Shirley saw her eyes were dry.

'I'll be all right,' said Mara faintly, and Shirley felt the feather-soft brush of her mouth against his, 'you'll make sure of that?'

'Always,' said Shirley, returning her kiss with startling urgency. He set one hand like a keystone against her back but even so Mara stumbled against the elaborate corner of the mantelpiece and all but fell into the fire. Her hand came out to ballast her, seemingly against empty air, but caught instead at the hem of her skirt and whisked it safely away in a whirl.

There was a rattle as the latch came free on the Swallowgate door and in a heartbeat Mara had eeled out of his arms and ducked into the kitchen not quite ahead of Alastair and Di's emergence into the sitting room. Di followed her, bent Shirley supposed on wrangling for gossip and control of the teapot simultaneously. That neither of these ventures seemed likely to meet with success seemed a moot point to his sister. He was pulled out of this reflection by an anxious tug at his elbow.

'You can do what I can't,' said Alastair, eyes wide with relief.

'I don't know that I can,' said Shirley, bewildered. He had once –it felt years ago now –endured Alec McNeilly's inquisitorial grilling as he watched over his favourite sister. He thought he could stand a second onslaught, but this wasn't that. Alastair slumped on the sofa next to him and said in that same relieved tone, 'the thing I can't do –she'll let you see her heart.'

The girls' chatter in the kitchen came back to them as a low hum, and when Shirley didn't respond, Alastair said more expansively, 'about Alec. They were close as sand and water but she won't grieve over him –or not so I'll notice, and if I don't know, I can't help. I think –I think maybe she'd rather I not. But I think,' he said, twisting his hands in striking mirror of his sister, 'she's open with you. Honest, I maybe mean, and so there's a chance she'll let you take some of the hurt –make it that bit better.'

'Would that it worked that way,' said Shirley, recalling forcibly his own family's stifled grief over Walter.

He thought of it later though when left alone with her. He had come up to the house bearing the first of the cooking apple windfalls from around the air force base and found the others had scattered, Nan to an emergency convening of the College Red Cross which she had somehow become secretary of, Di, Alastair and Poppy on an evening walk. 'Not all together,' Mara ha said in response to his raised eyebrow. 'You've missed Peter calling for Mouse by minutes.'

'Have I?' he had sad, folding her in his arms and kissing her before he could reasonably expect an answer. It was some time before he thought of stopping, the sound of his blood humming high in his ears. When he did, poised precariously on the quilted edge of the tower room bed that had once been hers, she had reached for him and said, 'Don't. Please don't stop.'

'I'm afraid if I don't I'm in danger of doing a great deal more.' He was more afraid that she would let him –she looked as if she would. His heart rose into his mouth at the thought; it wasn't only her who felt that magnetic draw for closeness. He drew his knees under his chin and laced his arms around them, curling his toes deep into the quilt block. It was all little squares and large triangles arranged slantwise –Steps to the Altar he thought he'd heard Ladies Aid call that. He looked sideways at Mara for confirmation, the half-formed memory niggling at him. She had wrapped her arms around her stomach and there was a raw ache to her eyes that made her look breakable, more so than Shirley could ever remember seeing her. The conversation with Alastair had come back to him then. _She lets you see her heart,_ he'd said, and Shirley had known that to be true, but it was only now under the scrutiny of Pilgrim at the windowsill and Mara a clear foot away that he felt how deeply this was true.

'Come here then,' he said, unbending and pressing her close, wanting suddenly to take the awful raw ache out of her if it was in his power.

'Please.'

'Not that,' he said, kissing her hair. 'You'd never forgive me afterwards.'

'I would.' She meant _that_ , he felt the sincerity of it as she shaped the words against his shoulder, the reverberations of it echoing in his bones.

'Not like this then,' said Shirley, his foot tracing the triangles of what he supposed to be the altar of the quilt block –or did those comprise the steps?

'There are –rules.' He felt absurd saying it aloud, perhaps he looked it too; Mara smiled suddenly as if he'd surprised her with a gift or a stray reminiscence of childhood.

'I don't recall you scrupling over manners before.'

Her humour was contagious; Shirley laughed in spite of himself. 'Not what I meant,' he said, and it wasn't. Though he had a strong suspicion that should it ever be discovered at Ingleside that he had called of an evening and gone on to spent the best part of a half hour in company with a young woman –much better in this hypothetical scenario to gloss over kissing, he thought –it would be taken for granted by Mother an Susan that all their warnings and lessons in propriety had gone unheeded. It was such an incongruous image that laughter welled up again, and he bit his tongue against it, exiling it to the corners of his mouth. Mara found it there, her fingers tracing the curve of his mouth. He caught at them and folded her hand in his, where he charted the lines of her palm with his thumb, thinking all the while of how best to explain what he _had_ meant.

'Jem said it me,' said, unthinking and was surprised by the childishness of the idiom.

It had been on a rare afternoons they had spent alone together. Walter had been ill at the time, Shirley thought, and Jerry had been…Shirley couldn't remember and it wasn't important. They had been sitting by the brook in Rainbow Valley, at the birch grove, because that was where the best fish were caught, and Jem had suddenly abandoned his rod for paddling his feet in the water and said, 'I dunno if you'll ever need the telling, probably not, but I never said to Walter, and if anything were to….look, what I mean is, there will be some girl who'll takes your fancy –there's bound to be –and the important thing to know then is that there are times you must trust not in what's said to you, but in the spaces around and between the saying of it.'

It had been such an unlooked for piece of advice, and it had made such sense that Shirley had never questioned it. One of those occasions, he recalled now as he traced the squares –steps were they? –of the quilt block, was on the heels of a heartache, of a loss.

'I suppose,' said Mara afterwards, 'he gave a thought for how frightening it is to come suddenly untethered from a loved one, to be adrift in the world?'

'I rather think not.' Nor had he, if it came to that, but he thought he knew what she meant, could feel it in the butterfly pulse of her neck, fluttery and darting against his collar bone.

'There's a bit of the psalms,' she said incongruously, surfacing the verse she wanted in Gaelic, 'do you know it?'

'Not like that,' said Shirley, trying not to laugh because he could feel her earnestness as something palpable between them. Mara fumbled for the English and came up with the vulgate. That _did_ make him laugh, only a bubble of mirth before he sobered and said, ' _I am as a shattered vessel_ –yes I've come across that before.'

'I've forgotten,' said Mara, winding her arms around his neck, ' what it's like not to be torn in pieces, and I'm tired of it. I don't know how to _be_ any more. Not but it hurts.'

'I remember,' he said, his thumb mapping the fine blue tracery of her veins. 'I remember –shall I give you back the knowledge of it?'

'Please.'

Her hands had found their way under his collar and the crescents of her nails were cutting into the skin that in the spaces between vertebrae.

'I do want this,' she said, her breath warm against his skin.

'Dear God,' said Shirley, 'do you think I don't?'

'Did I think it, I'd not have asked.'

'Home's betraying you,' said Shirley and tried to say lightly, but just then reason was warring with instinct and instinct was winning, and had among other things made sandpaper of his voice. She smelled of greenery, mint and parsley from the window-boxes, and the jasmine that was in the oil she rinsed her hair with, something else too, particular to her that he thought must be as much a part of the tower room or Swallowgate as a part of her. He'd never placed it and it eluded him now as he kissed the hollow of her throat. It was almost like incense, he thought, the spice of it, but not quite because it wasn't smoky, and he wondered, running his teeth along the arch of her neck, if grief had a smell, or perhaps prayerfulness. This line of thought was abruptly derailed by Pilgrim, still perched on the windowsill now doing things unmentionable with great thoroughness.

'I did mean it you know,' said Mara softly, 'What I said before, about needing grounding.'

'I never doubted.' He could feel her heart in her throat, the pulse of it quick and close under his lips. He dared to look at her and found that awful rending ache had ebbed from her eyes a little and felt inordinately grateful.

'Even so –it will make you easier about it,' she said and pressed a small, cordate seed into the palm of his hand. She began to explain, the words tumbling from her with a celerity to rival her heartbeat in what almost seemed nervousness, but he stopped her with a kiss.

I know,' said Shirley and he did because he had seen the seeds before, kept covertly in a jar in some recess of his father's office and only brought out at the behest of patients –mothers, always, all of them.

'Do I want to know how you know this?'

That made her laugh. 'I have sisters,' she said, voice warm with the after-effect of laughter, 'I think you've even met them.'

'I can't say I gave them much mind at the time.'

'Oh? That worried about getting home, were you?'

'I think you know better.' One hand was tracing circles on her abdomen as he said it, and he felt it jump under his fingers. That brought something from her that might have been a sob or perhaps only a hitching of her breath **.** But before he could worry for her, she was kissing him, hands tracing the map of his back finding here the scar that spoke to his brush with a virulent strain of varicella, there the lasting reminder of a fall from one of the House of Dreams more ragged lombardies the summer he was ten.

'Please,' he said into the weave of her hair. It was thick with the smell of jasmine and anticipation. He had meant to say more but coherence eluded hm. With an effort he recalled that he hadn't yet heard of anyone dying for sheer want of something, and seemed in no danger of finding out in ay case. For a moment it occurred to him to wonder how it was that she was once soft, warm and taut as a bowstring before instinct quelled reason thoroughly.

He had been afraid of hurting her –the world seemed to have done that so devastatingly of late –but in the event he found Mara only looked breakable. It might have been that Alec's death had taken that sense of wholeness from her, had left her in pieces, but he felt her come together beneath him, raw, wanting and wilfully reasserting her claim to existence and to life. He was acutely aware now of all of her, not only her heart and its beats, but of the lancet arch of her, the rapidity of her breath and the salt-and-lovage taste of her skin so that as blood echoed in his ears he could not have said whose it was.

Afterward, wary of crushing her, he made to move, felt cool air seep into the void between them but before it could settle Mara threaded her arms around him tightly.

'Don't,' she said. 'Not yet. I'd remember a little longer what it's like to have an anchor.'

'All right,' Shirley said. He could feel her trembling though, and his arms encircled her and pulled her close, _for safekeeping_ , he caught himself thinking and then wondered what it was he was afraid the world would hurl at her next. That thought roused the vestiges of reason, and he spared a thought for the others, where they were and when they might logically be expected back, and gave the window a critical look. He wasn't at all sure he trusted the ivy of the house not to come away in his hands, and anyway, climbing had always been Jem's God-given gift, not his. Evidently Pilgrim thought similarly, because his yellow eyes narrowed and he swished his tail in annoyance.

''No,' he said to Pilgrim, who still sat guarding the windowsill, 'you're quite right, not like a thief in the night.'

'Will you be in much trouble do you think?'

'I'm all right for a while –see the time. I'm more worried over you.'

Mara scrabbled one-handed among the contents of the shelf over the bed and came up with one of the heart-shaped seeds, pressing it into his hand.

'To remember you needn't. I did tell you.'

'Mm. The sisters I only half-remember, shall I take it they encourage this sort of thing?' he said dryly.

'Only that I know where to look for needful things.' Mara was laughing now; on the windowsill Pilgrim relaxed his guard and attempted to wash his front with dignity.

'Go softly, ariel, I begin to think there's something in all that talk of witchery.'

'Do you so?'

'Mm. Not nearly enough to frighten me,' he said, kissing her deeply.

'I should hope not. I thought you were strategizing ways to leave.'

'I was. I thought I could wait a while and visit with the others, salvage at least the semblance of civility. I don't think I've left much to recover, but I can rise to that at least. What's keeping them, do you think?'

'It's Midsummer,' said Mara as if this were obvious. 'It's an evening for charms. The air's thick with them.'

'Thin I should have said, isn't that what they say of the veil between worlds? You didn't think to go with them?'

'No,' she said, curling cat-like against his side, 'No. I'm yours. And you're going away…'

'I'll come back,' said Shirley, smoothing her hair into a rope. This evening it was all gold and cinnabar in the late-setting sun.

'Will you then?'

'Promise.'

'You can't possibly keep a promise like that.'

'This isn't more of your ghosts?' said Shirley, aiming for levity and landing nearer unease.

'No,' Mara said, mouth twitching. 'It's nearly four years of living through this bloody nightmare. It was supposed to be over three Christmases ago –four from this year – do you remember?' In a trice she was sitting upright again, her fingers corralling her hair into order. They were shaking with unvented feeling though and more than one pin missed it's mark.

'All right, I'm sorry –I ought to have thought. Let me do that.' He took the pins from the corner of her mouth and began to press them back into place.

'Every time I think the worst has been and gone,' he said as he worked, 'the world proves me wrong.'

'You oughtn't set it that challenge in the first place,' Mara turning her head to look at him. She moved without warning and the last of the pins slid painfully under his nail. She took it from him, slid it into her hair, and pressing her lips to the injured digit said quite as unexpectedly, 'When do you go?'

'I'm not sure. You'll know when I do.'

'Promise?'

'Yes – I _can_ promise that. I'll come back before then, make you a proper declaration, better surety against the snares of the enemy.'

The fragile look was back in her eyes. 'It's not that I'm worried about,' said Mara. Then rising and holding both hands out to him, began to cross the room towards the stairs.

'If you are staying,' said Mara, poised at the threshold, 'you'd much better not be found _here_ when the others return. Not even the glibbest talking could explain that away. What do you think of a fire?'

'I should have thought you'd had your portion this evening.'

'Not nearly,' said Mara. He reached for her then but she slipped lithe and ethereal out the back door of the house on the wing of the night, and stepped into the garden, where the bleeding sun caught her hair and made her look more fey than ever.

The others came back not long after, treading lightly, voices blithe and tinged with laughter. They looked not remotely surprised at the kindled fire with its savour of elfwort and eglantine, but sat down around it in fellowship. Poppy had lost the kiss that had hitherto lurked at the corner of her mouth, Shirley thought, and Di when he spoke to her sounded as gossamer-light as she looked. Peter and Alastair were talking of something that sounded miles away from earthly concerns and looking better for it. Perhaps Mara had been right about a charm in the air after all. Whatever it was, Shirley felt obscurely grateful to it for its gift of summer savour at last. The fire crackled, the light washed the sky in watercolour, and in the haven of the Swallowgate garden, the world felt right.


	23. Chapter 23

_With thanks as ever to those of you faithfully reading and/or reviewing._

* * *

 _Sept 1917_

 _Swallowgate,_

 _Kingsport,_

 _Dear Mums,_

 _Lasts are lurking around every corner this autumn. None of us can move without stumbling onto one; the last autumn at Swallowgate with its ivy and turrets, the last of Next Door's brambles, the last autumn term, our last Swallowgate Christmas. It's worse if I look further ahead. I suppose we'll run across Mara again, but I can't vouch for Mouse and thinking about all of us parting ways gives me a sick, dizzy sort of feeling. Was it like that with you at Patty's Place?_

 _It doesn't help that we said goodbye to Shirley the other evening. It's made that reverberating note of finality echo all the louder. We wanted to see him off at the station, the way we did Faith, but his train was due long before the sun was apparently, so in the end I only woke hazily at six to the sound of the house rousing itself and what if I didn't know better I would say was Mara having gone to meet the train anyway, but what was more probably the sound of her coming in with the milk._

 _She could have spared herself the trouble and slept in. The milk was sour. Again. Mara found it in the small, thin hours of this morning and thereafter we converged on it in greedy hopefulness to no avail. It sat on the scrubbed pine table like a strutting pigeon, blue and mocking. Poppy prodded it gingerly, but she needn't have taken the trouble; it was tepid and she only succeeded in dislodging little islands of curdled cream in the process. They floated greyly among the milk and seeing it made my stomach turn in resolution not to drink it. As if I needed the telling. Di had gone for the paper about when Mara went for the milk, and that was sitting on the table too, positioned to expose the headline from below the fold, which ran, if you want to know,_ _Milk Kills Bridgetown Child, Age 6_ _. As if this war weren't bad enough –but it's been like this for __months_ _, mums. I haven't said anything before because I kept hoping it would clear up with the weather or something –Shirley used to say it would before he left for England and we wanted badly to believe him –but there was mist this morning, every bit as grey and grisly as that milk, and it's_ _still_ _sour. I wanted to cry seeing it and couldn't say if that's over the dead children –the Bridgetown child isn't the first by a long chalk, mums –or something Poppy said this morning._

 _We were standing there, staring at the milk, feeling as if our world had collapsed, when she suddenly gave the bottle an especially vicious jab and said, 'I don't suppose and of_ _you_ _remember what it tastes like? I know I don't.'_

 _Swallowgate verily oozed with silence as we cast our minds back. 'No,' I said finally for all of us. It had never occurred to me to think of it before, but we've been on black tea and off porridge for so long that none of us can recall the taste of milk, cold, hot, or mixed with bread. I have a bleary recollection that it goes well with a biscuit but if I had to describe the taste of it…Anyway, I couldn't bear the terseness of the moment, so put out a hand and felt my way into an economy. 'If I could wish for anything in the world,' I began, and thus launched the story of Lord Harrington and the Cream Curdler, so called for his habit of murdering dairymen on the heels of milking hour and leaving the cream behind to spoil. Naturally there were a good number of clues collected over high teas and scones with cream._

 _That worked for a bit, but when I ran out of narrative reality came rushing back like a flood. Poppy had taken the milk into the kitchen and drained it away into the sink, and the sourness of it, yellowy and pungent, followed her back to the scrubbed pine table._

 _'You've a brain for numbers, Mouse,' said Mara as she reappeared, 'how many months does this make it since we've had milk we could stand to drink?'_

 _'Oh gracious,' said Poppy, drumming her fingers against the now-empty bottle, 'seven at least. Before they took the horses anyway.' And long before Alec McNeilly was killed, but Mouse had the sense and sweetness not to say that part aloud –you could see it flitting across Mara's face as it was. She only made a noise deep in her throat though –the kind I think I've described to you as a Scots sound –and said, 'it's cold comfort, I know, but it really is all up and down the province. Alastair's just written what amounts to so much grousing about the loss of custard in consequence of it.'_

 _'Whipped cream too,' said Di, almost laughing about it. 'He took especial exception to that, as I recall.'_

 _I gather from your letters though that_ _you_ _haven't suffered this epidemic of spoiled milk, and I'm glad, because_ _Morgan on Infants_ _firmly believes and truly that a baby must drink so many ounces of milk a day –and heaven help us if Rilla should fail Morgan in any particular! Seriously though mums, I'm glad; to judge from Rilla's accounts of him, Jims is that steel-minded that he'd drink the milk regardless, and he's not_ _my_ _war-baby, but I can't stomach the thought of adding his name to the list of children dead of the blue milk. I said as much to the others, talking of cold comfort, but only half-formulated the thought, afraid of jinxing your luck, and ended by waving a hand at the newspaper headline,_ _Bridgewater Child…_

 _'Go back to your economies, Catkin,' said Di with no small amount of affection, 'we liked those better, I think.'_

 _I hummed a bit, but acquiesced. It's not as if we had to strategize about how to cook with the beastly blue stuff, after all._

 _To that end we made fish stew this evening._ _Not_ _chowder, as there was no milk to thicken it, though I think Mara did throw a bit of the powdered stuff in for good measure. (_ _Don't_ _tell Susan as that would likely horrify her if she knew.)_

 _I really brought up the fish stew though for what was said over the preparation of it, as you mention in your last letter a taste for puzzles with regard to the ones in_ _Emma_ _. I rather think this conundrum had better be for you alone though and dad too naturally, as I can't imagine you failing to tell him anything. Well then. I'd been enlisted to prise clams open, which was of itself unusual, but as Di was round at Patterson street and Poppy had been delegated the task of dicing potatoes, I suppose it seemed only natural to draw me in. We're none of us over-keen on being apart at the moment –there will be so much to come, I suppose. Anyway, clams being what they are, I would have had an easier time getting blood from a stone, especially as we haven't cornmeal to spare for softening them. I wasn't particularly angling to take over the fish-heads though–I never_ _can_ _get over the fact that they stare at you from the broth –so said nothing about it. I was doubly hampered by the kitchen table, which was originally designed so that Victorian grandmothers could play patience at it,_ _not_ _for three women to prepare supper over. Naturally when some reluctant mollusc (if that's what clams are) jarred my arm it caught Mara's at the elbow. Thereafter her knife slipped, slippery with fish scales, and fell onto the table with a clatter. She went to retrieve it and the sleeve of her dress came free, which is how Poppy and I saw the bandage there. Were it anyone else I don't suppose I'd have noticed –nor Poppy either –but Mara's never been anything but excruciatingly careful with work, and I couldn't begin to think how she'd done it._

 _'You've hurt your wrist,' said Poppy, rather stating the obvious, but also pressing her fingers to it in a way that recalled Faith and made my stomach hurt._

 _'Oh that,' said Mara, shaking her wrist free and resuming the skinning of fish-heads, 'that's only a promise I've made.'_

 _It was such an odd thing to say that it made my skin crawl with gooseflesh –horripilation, Faith's letters tell me that's called properly. From the wideness of Poppy's eyes and the twitching of her nose, I rather think the oddness struck her too. All she said though as she arched her eyebrows in her best impression yet of an owl, was, 'more nearly a vow, isn't it? If there's blood involved?'_

 _'You might call it that,' said Mara. She got the skin off the fish-head, slick and scaly in the lamplight and I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach. I also just about sacrificed my thumb to the pairing knife I was using due to a bad combination of startlement and recalcitrant crustaceans. I'm well used by now to encountering a healthy dose of faerie in everyday, living with Mara, and I know Poppy shares enough of that history to step into it with her in spots, but I'd never come up against anything like_ _that_ _before. All I could think was that there was Poppy looking like she'd stepped into an ice-shower, equal parts concern and what I think was awe –and I mean that in the old sense of the word, mums, not its more mundane reworking –and obviously wanting to ask exactly what it was Mara had done and how easily she could extricate herself._

 _Mara had given up on the fish by then, and had Poppy's hands folded in hers, fingers gleaming dewily with fish-scales._

 _'Call it a temporary measure, Mouse, if that's what's spooked you. I don't suppose anyone now would think it counted,' said Mara, and at that point I gave up on the clams altogether and left the room because the ice-shower feeling was catching and I wasn't much for being enlightened._

 _It niggled at me though, and if you're so minded you might quiz Highland Sandy the next time he calls round to tell you that your house will be very big come the day, about just what kind of a vow means blood and a bandaged wrist. All I can think, on the strength of half-remembered Mediaeval History classes, is of that old-world tradition of handfasting, and that_ _can't_ _be right –or I wouldn't think it was but for the look of Poppy and her exhalation of breath, 'Mara you_ _haven't_ _,' just as I left the kitchen. That coupled with the candle-flame look of Mara lately and I tend to think I_ _am_ _right except…well the way I've half-remembered that particular practice it held for a year and a day, but in all the fairytales mums, blood sticks. Does that sound silly? I mean once you've invoked it, it tends to be binding, and having actually met Mara's family I have a hard time believing that so many superstitious Scots would see it differently. I think Poppy knew as much. Well normal people wouldn't go wide-eyed and fey over anything less than lastingly binding, surely?_

 _The other half of all this vaguery of course will be Shirley, and if I can't believe there's a superstition Mara would ignore, I equally can't believe that offered the chance to give her some further surety than an engagement against his return, he could help but seize it. He's very like dad in that way, Jem too come to that._

 _There's part of me though that hopes I'm right, because it would make Mara ours for good, however things fell out, and with so many lasts and partings looming I can't help jumping at the possibility. The other part -the part I'm half-afraid to write lest I tempt Fate -is more than half sick with worry for her lest anything go wrong. It's not that I think it will, exactly, only that when I look at lists of names in the papers and see how many of_ _them, however briefly, were pilots, it's impossible not to think...Well you'll have had the same thought, mums. I don't really need to put it down in ink and make us both feel ill at the idea._

 _You'll quite see why I say that particular puzzle isn't for general consumption. Rilla would no doubt think it all the height of Romance but the thought of Susan makes me –to borrow her phraseology –all catawumpus, and there's really no point in discombobulating Susan unduly if I'm wrong. Judging from your latest letter, her hands are quite full enough what with proposals of marriage, getting the harvest in and squashing Cousin Sophia._

 _Speaking of which, I wanted to thank you –in all this gloom and uncertainty I'd almost forgot –for your account of Susan chasing Whiskers-on-the-Moon down the walk with the dye pot. It afforded us hours of entertainment, especially Di and me, who have met him. Whatever possessed him to think…but if I try to parse it I'll only end by laughing and you'll never get anything like a coherent end to this letter. But tell me –could Susan really think of no better way to make her feelings known?_

 _Give my love to all at home, and if you happen to think of it and can safely dodge Morgan and Rilla, maybe give Jims an extra couple of ounces of milk from the girls who pin hopes. I like to think of him remembering the taste long after he loses his fondness for it._

 _Yours with gratitude and laughter,_

 _Nan_


	24. Chapter 24

_I'm a bit early posting, but I'm also about to move 7 years worth of impedimenta and an opinionated cat back to the country whence I came. If I fall behind on writing these next few weeks, you know why. In the meantime though, here's a long chapter to be getting on with, and many thanks for reading and/or reviewing._

* * *

By December not only was Shirley at the front but so was Faith, _awaiting_ , so her letters had it, _further instruction in the art of making something from nothing_.

'What else does she say?' asked Mara, abandoning her attempt at the seam of a parachute –crooked, Poppy noticed vaguely, all her seams had been since Shirley had left –and sitting at Poppy's feet.

'We-ell, there's a description of the English house she stayed in that makes Nan's Lord Harrington sound a pauper by comparison, presumably it's included for her, and –oh, you'll like this.' _I know you think me inclined to rush you oversoon into romance, Mouse, and perhaps to some extent I am. The thing to understand is that I only do it because it's nice to have a love affair that_ _isn't_ _mired in heartache and battles to live vicariously through_.

'I'm to ask you if I don't believe her.'

'Me in particular? I should have thought either of the others would do as well,' said Mara and laughed. 'It happens though that I tend to agree with her.'

'You _would_ ,' said Poppy, lobbing one of the window seat's cushions at Mara's head. Mara caught it with a laugh and settled it against the base of the window seat the better to lean against. 'Besides,' she said, 'I'd have thought that was a moot point by now, surely?'

Poppy reached for and shot another cushion at Mara, but missed her mark by an inch.

'Mouse, even _you_ can't possibly say there's nothing in –'

Mara caught the last of the cushions, tucked it under her chin and held up her hands in supplication. 'All right,' she said laughing, 'all right, I relent. There's nothing in those evening walks of yours. What else does Faith say, or does the letter end with her apologies for playing Miss Woodhouse?'

'No, there's a bit about –oh hang on, this is important. Trust Faith to work it in as an afterthought.'

 _It occurs to me,_ Faith had written, _that the new cotton is due into Halifax soon. I don't know what arrangements you've made about filling my place in the College Red Cross, but when I left my name was down to collect the stuff, I've just thought. It may be that all that's taken care of, or it may be that you'll have to find someone to run the errand at the eleventh hour. My apologies if it's the latter, which seems entirely more likely. A thousand curses on my disorganised head and best wishes for the holiday season. F. M._

That was how it fell out that Mara and Di set out to Halifax early in December with the express purpose of collecting the cotton for the College Red Cross's Christmas effort, no attempt having been made, as Faith had so rightly suspected, to reassign the errand. In her absence the Swallowgate chapter had meted out Faith's share of the work between themselves, but Poppy was anxious in the extreme about her winter exams, Nan had no great love of trains, and as Mara wanted to see her family in any case and Di was reluctant to send her alone, they set out together on a bitterly cold morning, the wind blasting through any number of layers in an effort to freeze the very marrow of their bones. The usual light scrim of ice decorating the pond by the Martello tower was thick enough to skate on, and walking into the wind bent them double with the effort of staying upright, but even so the journey to the Kingsport station was not a bad one. On the train they rubbed feeling back into their feet and warmed their hands against their necks, the memory of the cold easing as they thawed.

It was Halifax that was in chaos. Mara knew it almost as soon as they arrived; Di felt it in the vice her arm was pulled into, and the hiss of Mara's _'A Dhia'_ over the screaming of the wind. That Di hadn't Faith's talent for languages didn't matter; as she afterwards said to Nan it turned out that _O God_ sounded the same in every iteration.

' _What has happened_?' said Mara to Di as they wrestled the horse the stationmaster procured for them into obedience.

'I don't know,' said Di and pulled Mara up into the cart, scrabbling along the baseboard for a blanket, or a rug, or anything that seemed likely to cut the chill of the sea wind. There was nothing to be done about the smoke. It billowed thick and black around them, stinging their eyes and making them water. It seeped uselessly from the corners of their eyes, obscuring their vision and freezing in trails that prickled the skin on their faces. Mara had the horse's reins wrapped tight around her mittened fingers and could do nothing. On her suggestion though, Di held a damp finger up to gauge the direction it came from; it was no good, with the wind seemingly coming from six places at once, the smoke –and the fire that almost certainly occasioned it –might be anywhere.

'Shall I take the horse over for you to try?' offered Di. 'It's your trick after all, you might do better judging the results.'

'It was Alec's trick, not mine,' said Mara. 'And I'm not disposed to argue when you say the four corners of the earth are sending wind our way –even if it isn't true it _feels_ true.'

The clouds thickened around them and they fell silent, burying their faces in their hands and breathing through their mouths though the cold stung their hard palates. And then the clamour of a crowd rose up through the folds of the smoke and Di felt certainty like lead settle in her belly; they were going _towards_ the fire, the disaster, whatever it was. Beside her Mara went white with realisation and the horse screamed.

' _Ó Dhia nan gràs_ ,' said Mara looking out toward the harbour, and the words were so insubstantial that had Di not been listening for some signal of total destruction she would otherwise have missed them.

'Are you all right?' she asked stupidly, hearing the roar of the crowd, looking at the boiling cloud that had swallowed the harbour and unsure what else she _could_ say.

'Your family are they –'

'I don't know,' said Mara, ' I don't know and we can't stay to find out. That devil of a horse will trample something –more likely someone –if we try. Always supposing we don't choke on the atmosphere first.' She said something incomprehensible to the horse that while it sounded cathartic in the extreme did exactly nothing either to sooth it or turn it round.

'Should I go and –'

'Don't you _dare_ , ' said Mara fiercely. 'For one thing, you'll get pulled into the crush of people and I'll likely never see you again. For another, go near that animal and if it doesn't kill you it will at least kick you and we don't have Faith to mend you afterwards.'

With great effort and a torrent of what Di felt sure was invective, Mara got the horse reoriented towards the station while it kicked and snorted with indignation. 'Back the way we came then,' she said to it, and then added something that sounded like a prayer over her shoulder.

'For safekeeping,' she said in response to Di's raised eyebrows. 'And try not to breath the stuff in –it's no good both of us becoming ill if we can help it. I could about do with Poppy's gift for charming horses just this moment.'

From somewhere behind them, out of the moil and the smoke came what might have been an offer for help. It was desperately hard to hear though and it wasn't until a hale shout called _'Sal!'_ that much to the indignation of the horse, Mara whirled, reins still in hand, her eyes burning so deeply blue as to be almost black in their hopefulness.

'I'm sorry,' said Alastair emerging from the turmoil and seeing the look of his sister, 'I'm so sorry –but I saw you and I had to make you hear. Mara, I never thought what it would mean if –can I help?' He drew up beside them abruptly, out of breath. Not waiting for an answer he seized the side of the buggy and felt his way along to the front, where he crouched low and patted one of the horse's skirmishing forelegs.

'I think I'd better,' he said as much to it as to them. So saying, moving carefully and speaking softly, he took the horse's head between both hands and blew sharply into its nostrils. For a wonder this worked and Alastair swung up into the cart where he took the reins over from his sister without a word.

'Whose idea was it that you be put in charge of this demon, anyway?'

'Not mine,' said Mara. 'Circumstance dictated it. Do you know where Da and Mam and the rest–'

'I was going to ask you,' said Alastair. 'I saw you from the Crofters' shop window over Water Street and I'd seen what happened –'

'What _did_ happen?' asked Di, mouth muffled from being pressed against the crook of her elbow.

'Boats,' said Alastair, 'at least, people are saying it was boats. When the glass in Lindsey Crofter's window broke I thought maybe the weather had taken a bad turn. Except it was all the windows up and down Water street, and all the other streets beside, from the look of things. That was at a little after nine, so I'm thinking that must have been around when the boats collided. There's talk of one of them having explosives or something in it.'

That went a long way to explaining the fire and the devastation around them, and Di shivered, then coughed violently. Ahead of them a beam dropped out of a collapsing building in a shower of sparks and debris, making them wince. Mara, or perhaps it was the horse –very possibly both –screamed.

'Anyway,' said Alastair, swerving around the beam and trying gamely to sound as if this was an ordinary encounter and they weren't all breathing shallowly through their mouths against the smoke, 'I saw you and thought I'd find out if you knew what had become of the others. They weren't with me.'

'We came from Kingsport,' said Mara. 'If we'd known…'

'Ach, well if we'd known we'd have taken care to be well away ourselves,' said Alastair before succumbing to a spasm of coughing. Mara caught him between the shoulder blades with the heel of her hand, then threaded an arm around him and pulled him close.

'Come home,' she said.

They had reached the station by then, and the noise was less if the smoke wasn't. Alastair let the reins go slack in his hands, but he didn't move to get out. He squirmed round on the bench of the wagon instead and squinted red-eyed through the smoke and the debris.

'But Mam and the others are … _there…_ somewhere,' he said, helpless.

'I don't know where they are,' Mara said, 'and I know where _you_ are. I don't want to look away and find you've vanished into chaos and confusion. Please, _a bhalaich,_ come back a while.'

'Last time you wouldn't hear of it without a phone call,' said Alastair. Di thought he might be affecting to grouse a little, to tease Mara and suggest that it was entirely normal to meet in the desiccated streets of an exploded harbour, but he only sounded exhausted, and no wonder.

'We'll send word to tell them, if you like,' said Mara, 'but for God's sake, Alastair, you can't stay _here_.'

'No,' he said, swinging down from the buggy and extending both arms to help her down, 'No, you're right, it's madness to stay. But…you do think they'll be well?' His voice had drifted traitorously into the high treble of anxiousness. Too much to hope for to ask after thier safety outright, Di supposed.

'I hope so, _a bhalaich_ , I hope so.' And to Di as they headed for the platform, 'They _must_ be.'

* * *

Nan and Poppy were waiting for them, leaning on the latch of the gate, white and blue with cold. At some point prior they had been walking though, because Di could see where they had worn a track into the ground between the geranium beds and the fence, the snow trampled greyly into the mud.

'Get in,' said Di, waving her hands at them to propel them forwards, 'get in! It's just the way I imagine Siberia to be out here, and you're standing here stock still –Mouse your fingers must be a state.'

'Well I couldn't _do_ anything with them,' said Poppy grimly, even as she swung her right arm in a vigorous windmill. 'Not after…'she shuddered and curled her fingers into tight fists under her mittens, her knuckles showing stiffly through the knit of the wool.

'We _heard_ ,' said Nan, 'did you think we wouldn't? News came an hour after you left –it was all over town, all anyone could talk about –and of course by then it was too late and we were so _worried_...'She hurtled herself at Di, her forehead colliding with Di's chest with a muffled _thwump_.

'I was so _frightened_ ,' said Nan, and Di felt the words reverberate through her sternum. 'If anything had happened to you too…'her words dissolved into incoherence as she began to cry, dark blotches of water blossoming on the fabric of Di's coat.

'Nothing did happen,' said Di, petting her sister's hair with a gloved hand and causing it to shoot up in waves of static like a halo around them both. She declined to mention that her ears were ringing still with the noise of the panicked crowd or that her nerves remained coiled in Gordinian knots of anxiety.

'But it could have, it could have and I didn't know…I didn't know…'

'We're back now,' said Di. She got Nan by the shoulders and manoeuvred her towards Swallowgate. 'I'm frozen if you two aren't,' she said, striving for levity. She felt that she missed her mark even to her own ears but they all laughed anyway, the sound of it sharp against the snap of the wind.

Inside they striped off their coats, heavy with the acrid smell of the smoke and snowed with stray ash as much as with weather. It gave Di a queer, sick feeling to realise they had been too focused on getting home to notice it at the time.

'You said something about tea?' prompted Nan as she hung her coat on its peg.

'I think you'd better make it, Mouse,' said Mara, 'you look least like you're about to fall to pieces and I can't –I can't do anything with the smoke in my hair. It keeps reminding me that I've left home and my family in turmoil and I _know_ fretting won't do any good, but I think I've left rationality with them. I don't know how to stop.'

Once this statement would have heralded the apocalypse at the very least and Poppy would have stood and goggled at Mara. As it was, her arms went round her friend and she said into the hollow of her throat, 'If ever there were just cause for nerves, _a chairad,_ this is it, mm? I'll find you with the tea when it's ready.'

'You'll have to tell Faith something about that cotton,' said Di hazily as the purpose for their outing came rushing back.

'If you think she won't hear about this,' said Poppy as she shepherded them through into the sitting room, 'they're calling it a national disaster. It's bound to crop up in the news she's hearing of home.'

'Oh.' Di sat down on the sofa, and jolted inwardly at the softness and squashiness of it after the stiffness of the buggy ride. She sank against it in boneless exhaustion, emerging with effort from its depths to take the tea Nan pressed on her. It smelled powerfully of cloves, conjuring pictures in her mind's eye of Kipling's India and _The Light that Failed_ as narrated in Walter's velveteen baritone. As the heat of it seeped through her bones and settled as a round fortifying ballast in the pit of her stomach, she felt her muscles ease and became aware of how like and island Alastair looked without his sister, hunched close over the fire and spinning out his cup of tea as long as he could. Dimly Di thought that she ought to do something but couldn't summon the energy. So much must have been clear in her face, because she thereafter became aware of the lilt of Poppy's voice as she slipped carefully into the Gaelic that came so instinctively to Mara. It sounded more formal than ever to Di's fractured attention, and she felt the tug of memory as somewhere the recesses of her brain alighted upon the knowledge that Poppy's family hadn't cleaved to its history in the way the McNeilly family –once of Barra Isle –had done. There was a rattle of china and the chink of teapot against teacup, and conscience assuaged by these sounds of civility, Di closed her eyes and tried to imagine her residual nervousness and shock was curled into a ball hovering behind her right shoulder.

It was a trick of Dad's, one he had taught her the year Shirley was born and Mother so ill. Then she had cried herself sick with nerves and he had put one broad, brown hand on the nape of her neck and talked the anxiety out of her until she could almost see it, blue and floating, and separate to her. Later, as he smoothed her hair, she had asked him how he had done it and he had said, _I_ _t's like winding wool. You start with a little piece between your fingers_ , _so,_ he had picked up a coil of her hair to demonstrate, _and you make a knot of it. That gives you something to hold on to. Then you're able to wrap the rest round it, slowly, in the space between breaths or in-between heartbeats._ She had done it ever since in moments of tension and tried to do it now, thought she had better if she was ever to be useful to the people around her. Her heart was still echoing in her ears, fluttery and fast, and that was no good for a starting place, so drew in breath through her mouth and began to count the seconds between inhaling and exhaling, always with a thought for the ball of wool that was residual shock. She was brought out of this endeavour by the subtle shifting of the sofa's uncertain weight followed by the coolness and pressure of Nan's fingers tracing the bones in her wrist.

'You're never thinking of becoming a nurse too?' said Di, tilting her head to look at her sister.

'No,' said Nan. 'No, it's just, you're here, and I wasn't sure if you would be at the end of the day and I…you're all right. It's what dad does to see if a patient is…well… I think I mean…and I needed to know. You're all right.'

Di shifted her teacup so that the saucer with its cherry-blossoms sat unsafely on her knee and made a cradle of her arm for Nan's head, bending her wrist backward to smooth Nan's hair. It was dry and flyaway after a day out in the cold, but it smelled reassuringly of Swallowgate and the lavender Nan rinsed her hair with and the apple blossom scent she wore. Di's hand circled Nan's temple and she was aware of an overwhelming urge to cry and no reason for it. She bent her forehead to the crown of Nan's head thinking to stifle the impulse in the chestnut gloss of Nan's hair.

'Don't,' said Nan into the collar of Di's blouse. 'If you start you'll set me off, and I'm so glad you're back and you're all right that I don't want to spoil it with tears.'

* * *

They staved tears off until Gilbert Blythe arrived at the end of the week, creased with travel, prickled with stubble and smelling of exhaustion, grit and coal. He had Nan and Di in his arms almost as soon as he stepped into the hall, his cheeks brushing glancingly against theirs in an echo of what they had called 'scratchy kisses' in childhood. Then he perched his chin on Di's fiery hair, and said, 'The smoke's still in your hair. It will be for another few days I suppose,' and the tears Di had held off so long welled up. One of his buttons was cutting painfully into the bridge of her nose but she was afraid to move in case her sobbing undid her without his chest for an anchor.

'I couldn't _see_ ,' she said to the ridged buttons, 'and I was trying not to breath because you always said not to in case of fire, to put my head low and breath through my mouth, but Mara couldn't see either and I was afraid if I looked away the bustle and crowd would overwhelm us, or we'd hit something, and daddy I was so _frightened_ , and you weren't there.'

'I'm here now,' said Gilbert gently. 'I'm here now.' He had unfastened the clasp that held Di's hair in a coil and she felt tension ebbing like water as her hair fell down her back. 'I came as soon as I could,' he said, smoothing her hair between his fingers. 'I'm sorry it wasn't sooner. I'm so, so sorry.'

The pull of his fingers through her hair had served to temper the worst of her crying, and Di risked turning to look up at him. Her nose smarted where the button had left its indent and she felt the brush of one of her father's thumbs, calloused and gentle, ease it away.

'It's good to see you,' said Di, and Dad smiled.

'Better to see you. I wanted to come at once, but when I got the call about the harbour and what had happened –'

'Of course you had to go,' said Di, tightening her hold on him in an effort to realise the depth of this shared understanding. 'They made you swear an oath to help…and I was there, I saw…they needed you. So, so much,' she added, risking the ridged buttons again as she resettled her head against his chest. Then abruptly she straightened and said, 'I didn't think –you'll want something to eat. There's half a tourtiere left over from the other evening, shall I reheat it? And coffee? Tea?'

'Tea would be bliss,' said Gilbert, a smile in his voice. 'And maybe some of Nan's gingers if there are any?' He sounded hopeful now. 'They did think to feed me you know, but baking's almost disappeared and nothing's half so restorative as those. All the bite in them, I think.'

'Well they never did call for much sugar,' said Nan, her laughter reverberating warmly against her father's ribs. 'Marilla used to say ginger nuts didn't count if you couldn't feel the prickle in your teeth afterwards.'

The others, who had been half-hidden in the shadow of the hall, now emerged with tentative greetings of their own.

'They're all right,' said Gilbert, catching sight of Mara, and apparently placing Alastair more readily than Poppy had back on a summer afternoon. 'I've seen them and they're all right. I'm to give you this.' He held out a sheet of paper that appeared at a glance to have been written on not only on both sides, but apparently _over_ the existing writing also. Mara and Alastair fell on it greedily.

'They're really all well?' said Mara, looking up from the letter, 'all of them?'

'Well, I won't say they aren't worried –it's a habit we adults have got into of late –but the little ones think it's all a grand adventure.' He sounded equal parts rueful and amused.

'No wonder,' said Mara, teetering on the edge of relief, 'they won't have seen anything like it, the wee rattans.' Then, as the horror of it came flooding back, 'I hope they never do again.' She looked the way Di had a minute ago, all raw nerve ends and frayed edges. Wordlessly Gilbert Blythe crossed the room and folded her in his arms. 'There then,' he said, 'they're all right. They're staying with friends. They're glad you're safe –both of you.'

'Oh?' said Mara, who had looked up at 'friends', 'Did they say where?'

'Leawynd, with the Kerachers,' said Alastair, waving the letter, 'but they'll never all fit there –they must be living like sardines.' That got a laugh from his sister, bright and thready; Gilbert felt it somewhere in the region of his manubrium.

'The tea's steeped, if you'd like any,' said Di, reappearing in the hall, 'or we could stand here and catch pneumonia from the draught. Whichever you'd rather.'

That got a proper laugh from Alastair.

'Come on then,' said Alastair, tugging at his sister's limp elbow, 'she's not wrong. We'll not go so cross-eyed over Mam's writing if we read it over something warm.' He was already through the connective door to the sitting room, his words floating back to them over his shoulder. _Like that is it,_ thought Gilbert, and felt something twist in his chest. Apparently Mara felt it too or else caught a flash of the sentiment skim across his face because she said as she slipped her arm though his, 'I shouldn't worry –I don't think she's thought of it at all.'

'Not if you get your wish I think.'

'I wouldn't dream of interfering,' said Mara.

* * *

The tea was Red Rose, solidly Canadian and every ounce as restorative as could be hoped for. They were into their second cups when Mara frowned and nerved herself to ask, 'How bad was Richmond, Dr. Blythe, when you saw it?'

'There's not a lot of it left, I'm afraid,' he said with apology. In fact there was none of it left, but he hadn't the heart to put it so bluntly. No need to knock _all_ of the corners off the children's world if he could help it, and anyway it didn't matter; Mara was sharp enough to say what he wouldn't.

'There won't be any of the houses then?'

'Not much, no. Some shells, you might say.'

'What are you getting at?' asked Alastair, venting his impatience with his sister by swiping a second ginger nut off the platter Nan had laid out. 'We _know_ all of that –'s why you made me come back here, no?'

'I'm thinking about Christmas, _a bhallaich_ ,' said Mara, nudging the plate half an inch beyond his reach and attempting to press another biscuit on Gilbert.

'If they're still with the Kerachers then –and I expect they will be –' this as she cut her eyes for confirmation at Gilbert, 'then there'll not be the extra room, will there?'

'Oh,' said Alastair, swallowing his biscuit as understanding dawned. 'And the house won't be there to go to, you mean.'

Mara gave the ceiling an expressive glance. 'The thought had occurred to me, now you mention it. Nor will anyone else's be.'

'But that's easy,' said Di over the teapot, 'you'll come back with us.'

Mara opened her mouth to wave away this offer with protestations of imposition but was forestalled by Gilbert Blythe. 'Of course you will,' he said. 'You must. We insist. Poppy too, if she likes.'

'Oh I couldn't,' said Poppy, 'I've promised to go home –but you must,' this to Mara. 'I want to hear your account of Rainbow Valley and Ingleside, and Gog and Magog –the Jekyll-Hyde cat too,' she added as an afterthought. 'See if you can't charm it into submission the way you do Pilgrim.'

Across the table Gilbert was nodding contentedly. 'That settles that then,' he said. 'They really haven't left you any room for contradiction. Besides –did you never think we'd be curious to know _you_?'


	25. Chapter 25

_Thanks all for reading and/or reviewing, and the support that poured unexpectedly forward for the move. The opinionated cat and I are now settled, and I am a qualified expert in international moves. Should this ever be a scenario in which you find yourself, I'm here and waiting with advice. Also with an unintentionally long chapter! Hopefully it makes for easier reading than it did writing._

* * *

The last of the Swallowgate Christmases was a quiet one. They trimmed the house with holly and ivy, recruiting Alastair to weave it into the hard-to-reach places, and scrounged the ingredients for if not all their habitual Christmas treats then a respectable number.

'I can't believe it's almost at an end,' said Poppy as they took turns stirring a Christmas pudding. ' If this term was any indication, the spring term will fly by. Where do you think we'll be this time next year?'

'I was going to say home,' said Nan, who was threading a paper chain over the scrubbed pine table, 'but we'd talked of teaching, Di and I, and the Glen school has almost certainly been placed by now, so perhaps it will be elsewhere after all.'

'You'd go back for Christmas though,' said Mara, taking the pudding from Poppy, who made no effort even to pretend she was in control of this operation.

'You'll find a way back together,' said Alastair placidly, 'the odd thing would be if you didn't.'

That bolstered them and they went on with their allotted chores humming snatches of Christmas music until Poppy finally despaired of her role in the making of the pudding, sat down at the harp and said, 'Shall we have a proper sing then?'

* * *

They lingered late into the winter that year, absorbing, or so they said to one another, as much of the remaining time at Swallowgate as they could and on what Donne had once called 'the year's midnight' they exchanged gifts quietly over the crackling of the fire and the wailing of the wind down the chimney. Faith had sent a sheaf of papers that proved once unrolled to be a series of sketches _because_ , ran her Christmas greeting, _I hadn't the time for watercolours._ These captured the girls who pinned hopes at the stray, even incidental moments of their Swallowgate years. Here they sat rapt at Nan's feet as she unfolded an economy, her arms outstretched and fingers splayed as she narrated things unknowable to the viewer; there Mara fed a fire with flowers as the girls indulged in civil revelry around the flames. _In Which a Pilgrim Comes to Call_ was homage to an October morning so long ago as to have been almost forgotten. There was Poppy saucer in hand, Pilgrim half-in the door, and there too was Mara's look of unbelief at the sight of the cat, Faith's impish eyes bright with entertainment, and the twins at the scrubbed pine table, tacitly thriving, so the sketch hinted, on this tableau for girls and cat. But the unanimous favourite showed them sewing; the blue dachshunds watching over them from the mantle, Mara with her mouth full of pins, the shepherdesses on the table, Di poring over a pattern book, Faith on the window seat, her needle dangling forgotten from the spine of a French Grammar, and Nan and Poppy labouring over some indeterminate project. Faith had captioned it in her unruly hand, _The Girls who Pin Hopes_.

For the rest there was more restraint even than in previous years. Excepting –for old time's sake –that bit of carving from Mara to Nan (it was salt and pepper cellars this year, done to look like ink bottles) their gifts to one another were comprised largely of possessions that they had seen the others admire. Poppy began it, with her gift of a gilded copy of _Persuasion_ to Nan, embellished only by the inscription on the fly-leaf. _17/12/17 For Catkin at Christmastime, with apologies for my own imperfect letter writing and with the promise it will be well short of 7 years before we meet again. Mouse_

'As a memento,' said Poppy, 'and so that you can pour over it at leisure without worrying about getting it back to me.'

Such overt sentiment might have reduced them to teariness had the room not been seized with laughter at the revelation they had all had the same thought.

'I was going to say much the same, Mouse,' said Nan, handing her a clumsily wrapped packet that proved to be the drop-spindle of her childhood.

'You'll miss it, surely,' said Poppy, wide-eyed and owlish as ever.

'Not half so much as I'll miss you,' Nan said.

'We'll have to be sure and see lots of each other,' Di said, 'but in the meantime, these will have to make up the difference.' She handed Mara a ream of what proved to be the pictures that the previous years' theatre-excursions had occasioned. Like Faith's sketches, these too were unframed, and vouched not for set pieces but those heartbeat moments an outsider might have overlooked. Poppy poised between stairs looking elegant as was possible with Pilgrim draped around her like a fur stole, Nan radiant, her hair half-pinned for an evening out. There was Faith on the window seat with no thought for the creases her gown would incur looking impatient to be off, the circlet of pearls on her hand resplendent in the moonlight that haloed her. Nan and Poppy again, arms linked and eyes creased in laughter over a joke the camera couldn't record. Unlooked for emerged one of Mara, hair loose and chin raised in defiance, the fire of her Beatrice discernable even through the photograph.

'There are none of you,' Mara said to Di, even as she hugged the pictures close.

'There will be time enough for that,' said Di with a shrug, 'another year, when Jem's come home and demanded the camera back. Remind me.'

'I'll hold you to that,' said Mara.

'Good,' said Di impishly, 'after all, we're bound to see each other again.'

'Yes, I expect one way or another you're right,' said Mara then shielded the photos and ducked as Di threw a pillow her way with expert aim.

* * *

The journey to Ingleside was fraught. The hard winter meant the train didn't arrive at Kingsport until half an hour after its departure time. The knowledge that this was well in excess of the statutory eleven minutes that allowed travellers to reclaim their fare was tempered by the further knowledge that the red tape and postage involved in reclaiming it would likely exceed the fare in the first place. It was tempered still further by the sight of Halifax Harbour, ruined and black, the boat standing like skeletons among the debris.

'To think we were headed _into_ this,' said Di.

' _Don't_ ,' Nan said emphatically. Thereafter she was heard to observe that she had never seen the little boat to P.E. I. so crammed with people.

'Hardly surprising though,' said Mara as they fought their way on board, tickets clutched tight in mittened fists. 'Everyone who possibly can go is going, and no wonder.' Easterly wind notwithstanding she leaned against the rail and waved the wrack of the harbour out of sight.

The crossing was an uneven one and when the boat finally came in at the Charlottetown Harbour the sun was sinking into the water. Not liking the idea of walking through the gloaming to the train station, Alastair secured a carriage and they drove, only to discover that P. E. Island's winter had been no less hard than the one they had endured in Kinsport and this train too was delayed. They stood in anxious hopefulness on the platform until the cold sunk into their bones and drove them into the waiting room, where at intervals an increasingly dispirited station master appeared to announce dolefully, 'You're train is now expected at…' the time stretching ever later until the little party grew to dread his appearance. At seven o'clock by the station clock, as Alastair was beginning to suggest trying the nearby booth for sandwiches in lieu of supper, the signal flashed green, a lone blinking eye in the veiled landscape. Hopefulness rose up in them like bubbles and then in booming voice, 'The train now at Platform 1 is the Northbound train for New London, calling at Warrander Chase, Milton Station, Miltonvale Park, Hunter Ford, Wheatly, Wheatly Cross…'

On it went, all 40 stops, some of them ones that the Ingleside twins had forgotten existed. At seven o'clock though, hungry, headachey and exhausted with the efforts of the day, the fact that the Northbound train for New London was clearly the late-night milk train diminished their elation not a bit. They hastened outside and clambered eagerly onto the train, gratified to find that the lateness of the hour and the nature of the stopping train had rendered the coaches nearly empty. They secured a compartment and braced themselves to add another two and a half hours onto the day. In the end it was nearer three hours. There was signal failure at Springfield.

The sight of Ingleside lit up in warm invitation was more than compensation for their trials though. They descended the hill to the house and it seemed all the lights must be on in glad expectation of their arrival. Then, best of all, the riotous, jocund war-whoop that had so influenced Jem's, and there was Mother running to meet them, arms outstretched and hair billowing streamers of silver and amber in the lamplight.

'You,' she said, engulfing them all in one swift bone-crushing hug, her children, children's sweethearts, and friends at once, 'are a sight for sore eyes, all of you. Was the train declassified? Your father thought it must be when word came that the train was delayed. And when you still weren't here by nine we rang again and heard about the signal failure –there is nothing more stressful than finding yourself at the mercy of an idle train in the middle of nowhere. I've experienced it more often than I care to remember. What about the boat crossing? They can be awful this time of year. No,' raising a hand and fending off their answers deftly, 'don't tell me. Come into the warm first. You're like russet-apples, all of you, and you must be starving. Susan has a feast waiting worthy of Borden himself, though you mustn't tell her I say so. She's put out with him this week because the flour ration has increased. Also the newspaper is reporting the possibility of an introduction of something it's calling 'Daylight Savings Time' in the New Year and she thinks it's a terrible idea.'

'We've had that for years,' said Mara as laughing, Anne led them into the house.

'Have you?' she asked as she went, 'and there hasn't been seething opposition to the unnatural meddling with God's Time? That's Susan-speak, by the by, not my name for it.'

There was more laughter from her children, their breath puffing before their noses like smoke-dragons.

'Not that we've noticed,' said Nan. 'Tell her I'm for it. I think it's strange that there are parts of the year where you and I run different clocks, mums.'

Then they were inside, shucking their coats, the very walls of Ingleside welcoming them. There was the usual signal-to-noise static as three or four greetings went forth into the breech at once, all of them bell-bright and jocund.

'Hallo the house!'

'We've come home!'

'Gilbert, Susan, Rilla, they're _here_!'

In answer, over the inevitable tangle of scarves, dropping of gloves, the wrangling with hats and hatpins, and the thrumming and ankle-weaving chaos of a cat that was most definitely Jekyll that day, 'Are they here?'

'Have they arrived?'

'Won't be a minute –must just finish –' whatever further salutation might have emanated from one Dr. Blythe's office was abruptly curtailed by a wail announcing the arrival of Jims on the harried arms of Rilla. She came tearing into the hall to meet her sisters, arms brimful of recalcitrant war-baby and half a knitted sock. These hindrances notwithstanding she pulled both Nan and Di into as much of a hug as was feasible and in the ensuing chaos Anne, who had run out without a coat in her jubilation, rubbed warmth back into her fingers and watched them gloatingly. It had been a long time since Ingleside had felt this full.

'This,' said Rilla into her sisters' shoulders, 'is every reason I _never_ wanted to go to university.'

More laughter and Nan said, 'Nonsense Spider, you haven't lived until you've been stranded for at least half an hour in an empty field miles from civilization.'

'The tea, Mrs. Dr. dear,' said Susan serenely and with no notice for the merry riot occurring in her hall, 'is ready whenever the children want to have it. I've laid it all out on the coffee table in the parlour. They'd better have it sharpish though, or that cat might take a notion to eat it himself. He's Jekyll today and you know how he loves milk.'

In the event though, none of the girls who pinned hopes touched the milk, a fact missed by the chattering Inglesideans until Gilbert appeared and took stock of the tea tray.

'What,' he said, elbowing his way between the twins and helping himself to tea, 'no milk for any of you? Didn't Susan say, ours is most eminently drinkable.'

'We couldn't possibly!' said Mara, startled.

'Not without Mouse,' amplified Nan.

'It wouldn't be right,' Di said.

Gilbert nodded, made show of adding a generous dollop of milk to his own tea and said on consideration, 'Should I take it on that basis that Faith is abstaining from milk too, wherever she is?'

'Gracious no.'

'I shouldn't think so.'

'I hope not –she'll have quite enough to put up with as it is.' This last from Mara.

'Girls,' said Gilbert in tones of affected despair, 'that makes absolutely no sense.' Then his eyes crinkled and his mouth broadened into the Blythe smile, flashing teeth and good humour. 'I'd expect nothing less,' he said to them.

* * *

It wasn't until the following day that well-rested and stomachs heavy with food the Ingleside party finally divided naturally into pockets and groups as long-separated kindred spirits came together with outpourings of news and tried to cram a season's worth of sentiment into an afternoon. Thus after dinner found Gilbert and Alastair competing at chess under the watchful eyes of Gog and Magog because as reasoned by Gilbert, 'Much better not venture into the fray until they remember we're here. Otherwise you only make yourself dizzy keeping up with the turns in the conversation.'

Across the way, sitting in the window-seat of the Ingleside parlour's front window, Di and Rilla traded gossip over the sheet they were basting while a sleepy Jims wedged himself into the crook of Rilla's elbow and made grabs for their hair as the spirit moved him. Nan and her mother had forgathered by one of the inglenooks for what Mara thought must be a long-overdue catch-up if their mutual loquacity was any indication –to say nothing of the frequency of the letters they exchanged.

'That will be your vanishing trick Nan wrote about,' said Susan Baker appearing at her side with a mug of hot tea. This declaration failing to process, Mara raised her eyebrows in inquiry.

'She said you stepped into the background,' said Susan elaborating and pressing the mug on Mara. 'Which made it sound not remotely sensible. Seeing it's different though,' said Susan by way of a generous afterthought. Had it been one of the girls who pinned hopes the temptation would have been to invoke Doubting Thomas and the blessedness of people who believed without seeing. It was Shirley's Mother Susan though and Mara retreated to the security of truthfulness.

'I hadn't realised I did it,' she said, balancing the mug precariously on her knee and cupping both hands round it.

'No, well. Nan did wonder about that. You're not to mind the chip,' This appeared to be another apologetic afterthoughts, 'but I thought –well it's Shirley's favourite, that one. For the colour I think.'

* * *

'Do we interfere?' asked Nan, with a nod in the direction of Mara and Susan by the fire.

'No,' said Anne thoughtfully, 'no I rather think that's Susan's attempt at an olive branch. Besides,' this in conspiratorial whispers, 'I want a word with you, just us two, and I can't have it if you're helping ward off the Spanish Inquisition.'

Nan laughed, then tilting her head backwards the better to look up at her mother, said cosily, 'Oh? What about?'

Anne cut her eyes at Susan and Mara discussing animatedly things inaudible from the distance of the inglenook by way of an answer.

'You remember that letter you sent back in September?'

'Remind me,' said Nan, 'I feel I've done nothing but write letters –to schools mostly –in-between essays and counting the stitches on hospital gowns.'

Anne made a sympathetic noise somewhere behind her teeth, and abandoning her knitting, slid onto the floor the better to pull Nan's head onto her shoulder.

'This would have been at the start of term,' she said, smoothing Nan's hair. 'Full of lasts, you said, and how to make a fish stew without milk and fragments of half-remembered Medieval History.'

'Oh!' as memory came rushing back.

'You were right about blood sticking; Highland Sandy made it a marriage vow, to judge from the details. He said –'

'He _what_?' Nan shot upright like a lightning bolt, her chin narrowly missing her mother's nose as she whipped round to face her.

'I was getting to that. It involves bloodletting and a Gaelic rhyme that I won't attempt because I'll mangle it, and if the benevolent Ariel at Susan's elbow doesn't notice, her brother will. I gather it's a custom about as old as God.'

'It would be,' said Nan. 'But why call it temporary?'

'I think because, the way Highland Sandy talked about it, it didn't sound as if anyone would acknowledge it as such now, except to concede the tradition of it. You _might_ get it, he thought, as an addendum to a church service among the families with deep enough running roots and Gaelic to remember it, but not usually on it's own. Though he did say _he'd_ have credited it –his word not mine –were it up to him. Of course he also freely acknowledged that a broad survey would vouch for his subscription to any number of what he calls old ways.' Anne shrugged, smiled, and looked with interest at her daughter, whose face proceeded to register pleasure, surprise and that old-world awe she had written about in quick succession.

'Of course it would,' said Nan as her world settled back into normal orbit. 'I mean, of course he does. Fetches and waterhorses and probably selkies too –'

'Dare I ask?'

'Seal-people, if I understood Poppy right. She _knew_ of course –if you'd seen the look of her, mums…'

'You did think it was something of the kind.'

'Well I swithered,' said Nan, 'to use a Scots word if ever there was one. Mostly I thought it must be something like that but other times I thought that if it was, surely Mara would have _said_ something about it.'

'Would you have done, if it were you I mean?'

'Well I –yes of course, I'd have said to you and Di.'

'And Faith?' Anne raised her eyebrows inquiringly and caught uncertainty flash across Nan's face as flickering as the fire in the nearby hearth.

'Oh well –I suppose that would depend,' said Nan, twisting her fingers together.

'On whether it involved a minister or an old-world superstition involving blood and a Gaelic prayer, you mean?'

'Apparently so.'

Briefly mother and daughter laughed. Then Anne eased her little girl's head back onto her shoulder and swapping gossip for mothering asked in spite of herself, 'Why so worried Kitten? When you wrote you said you hoped you were right, and you weren't far wrong, but there's a line just there,' Anne touched her index and middle fingers to the junction above Nan's nose, 'and another there,' repeating the gesture, 'that create an eleven and in the unforgettable words of Davey Keith, I want to know why. I've missed our talks.'

Nan shook her head in an effort to dislodge the eleven and smiled. 'I wouldn't say worried, exactly,' she said, 'and I _am_ glad –I meant what I wrote to you about wanting Mara to be ours – I've just been thinking. You remember how upset I was when Jerry left without formalizing anything between us? He kept saying that he hated the idea of me standing still for the rest of my life if anything should happen to him, and I didn't understand. I _couldn't_ have understood then, I think. The war was supposed to be over by Christmas, and it would be a great, glorious, triumphant and _easy_ English victory. Jerry was wiser. The war went on and I began to catch him up by inches, this awful realisation that if something happened to him I didn't want to know how the next act of the play unfolded, and I shoved the knowledge into the far corner of my mind because the realisation was frightening and total. Then Shirley left and I'd catch Mara scanning the sky for aeroplanes or writing a letter last thing in the evening because it was the first spare moment she'd had all day, and…I don't know, have there ever been moments in your life where you've felt someone to be holding a mirror up to you?'

'We all feel like that in spots,' said Anne comfortably she hoped. A shiver that had no right being there though was tracking its way down her spine and into her soul. 'It's like that with you then, is it?'

'Mm. Suddenly I couldn't push the knowledge of Jerry and his importance into a corner anymore because it was always in front of me in Mara, knowing that if anything…happened…if for some awful reason Shirley didn't…couldn't… come back…that that was the one thing in the world that could take all the fire and energy out of her, and it frightened –still frightens – me, because I know I'd be just the same. If I stop to think on it too long I become afraid for her, and for them, and for me, who for most changes with the quarter hours. And suddenly the idea of waiting to formalise an engagement until the world has let out a collective breath of recovery and he's home makes the most sense of anything I've heard in four years –including all the literary theory I've had to imbibe.'

'I always hoped for that kind of love for you,' said Anne dreamily, 'for all of you. But I never imagined –never intended –when I built those castles in the air over your cradles, that you'd know the sting and ache of it as well as the joy. But then I blinked and you grew up and the world rushed in, my best efforts to stop it notwithstanding. We never do want hurt to reach people we care about, especially family –and somewhere in that space where I blinked Jerry and Mara have become that to you every bit as much as we are.'

'Mm. Mums, I've missed this.'

' _You_ have?' Anne's effort to sound indignant was hampered by the fact she was threading an arm around Nan's shoulders even as she spoke. ' _I_ feel distinctly left out, what with your letters full of analysis of radical revolutionary writers, fireside revelries, and economies, especially as I've somehow contrived to never yet hear one. Tell me one now?'

Nan laughed, crushed herself against her mother's side in an attitude she had long ago outgrown, and obliged. When she had finished there was a silence as downy and deep as the snow in which it emerged that not only Anne but the rest of the house had stopped to listen, even Dr-Jekyll-and-Mr-Hyde, who had ceased to be Hyde long enough to curl up on Mara's knee to her evident exasperation and Susan's equally discernible surprise.

'That,' said Gilbert with satisfaction, 'is something like. Let's not go another year without hearing another.'

There was a chorus of agreement, as with this sentiment at least, the company unreservedly approved.

* * *

Christmas Eve dawned a white glare of snow, softened not at all by the feather-down of drifting flakes that swirled around the house and rendered Ingleside worthy of a snow globe. The people within spent it gathered by the fire. Having taken the day off from Red Cross work they sat mired in books, mugs of tea and over on the window seat an Othello tornement was in session.

Much later, the day long over and the fire smoored, Mara watched the Ingleside windows for signs and sounds of Christmas morning. _Spot the difference_ , she thought wryly as a band of stars shimmered crystalline against the glass. They had been to church, had heard the Christmas story out of Luke, and had come away with the Merediths as noisome, chattery and full of good will as any deity could hope for. None of that lessened the watery feeling of being Elsewhere for over the holiday. She was just beginning to wish for Alec -how keenly he'd have enjoyed this adventure! -to evoke something of home for her, when there came a pattering of feet, and then the telling scent of apple-blossom as Nan scrabbled up onto the window seat and joined her in vigil.

'You couldn't sleep either?' she asked as she settled.

'It's that bit odd, not being home for Christmas.'

'It would be,' said Nan sympathetically. 'I think at least half the magic is in the traditions you observe.'

Mara tilted her head in inquiry and said, 'Was it like that then for you, the year it looked like you'd be stranded with us?'

'Oh well, not for any failing of yours,' said Nan flailing, 'only because…'

'It was out of your control?'

Nan nodded, then with one fine-boned finger, she traced the shadow of a scar where it gleamed faint but discernable in the moonlight, red and angular against the curve of Mara's wrist.

'Just there, is it?'

'Trust you to guess.'

'Researched more nearly,' said Nan with a smile. 'I wish you'd said.'

'There are limits,' said Mara with a shrug, though her fingers reached for Nan's and gave them a squeeze all the same.

'In believing in fairy stories? Not in this family; we grew up on them. You must have noticed by now.'

'I meant more about bringing people into your family.'

Nan's fingers closed tight around Mara's. 'You must know you'd be that whoever you married' she said softly but no less fiercely for that. 'You and Mouse both.'

At this juncture Di appeared in the doorway clad in a blue flannel dressing gown and arms wound tight around her torso for warmth.

'You do realise,' she said taking in the spectacle of the two girls curled like cats in front of the frosted window, 'that Susan never banks the kitchen fire Christmas Eve for _exactly_ this reason?'

'Also,' said Alastair groggily as he appeared behind her, 'that it's getting on for three in the morning?'

'Because Mara has ever kept reasonable hours,' said Di very dryly.

Alastair shrugged. 'I thought maybe it would be different with strangers.'

'It may well be.' Di said.

'We couldn't possibly vouch for that,' said Nan.

Deftly she slipped off the windowsill, pulling Mara with her by the crook of one elbow. 'Com on,' she said, 'if Di's right it will be warmer in the kitchen and we can fortify ourselves with something warm to drink besides. Whoever built this house did it without much thought for foregathering by the windows when the snow was coming down like feathers on the wing.'

In the kitchen they crowded around the wood-burning stove where the embers of a dying fire were faintly visible. Di jostled around them opening cupboards and taking down mugs and chocolate powder while Nan rekindled the fire until it snapped and crackled with vim.

'What were you doing up anyway?' Alastair wanted to know, accepting a mug from Di in his turn. 'Come to see the oxen kneeling?'

'At this hour?' said Mara, amused, 'Hardly. It's at midnight that happens.'

'Of course it is,' Di said, as if discussions of kneeling oxen passed in her world for normal conversation starters.

'Someday,' said Nan, 'I'm going to find a superstition you don't subscribe to, Ariel.' She left the fire and joined them at the kitchen counter, bracing her elbows against the stone lip of it. Opposite her Alastair made a noise far back in his throat that conveyed simultaneously amusement and unbelief. 'That'll be a long day coming,' he said and elbowed his sister affectionately.

'If you want to know,' said Nan, 'we were dwelling on absences and ghosts. They're always more keenly felt this time of year.'

Alastair whistled softly and a ripple of unspoken agreement moved around the counter. It didn't help, that as Nan had said –was it really only days ago –to Mother, the war was meant to have ended four Christmases ago. The realisation seemed to strike them all in the same moment, exacerbating rather than diminishing their collective memories of the young men they had sent to war, not forgetting Faith, of course. She would have had a joke tucked at the corner of her mouth for just such an occasion as this. As it was they were saved by Rilla, who manifested in the kitchen door looking ghostly in a high-collared white flannel nightdress, a bristly and equally white blanket trailing impotently from her arms whence it had slipped in her flight downstairs. She was clutching a kettle in one hand and a child's hot water bottle in the other, but all she said as she took in the spectacle of them was, ' What have I got to do to get a name like that? I'm so very _tired_ of 'Spider.''

She set the kettle boiling on the stove and muscled her way in-between her sisters and friends, her elbows at jutting angles to her person, the better to secure her place. Di reached across her for a mug off the rack and transferred the last of the chocolate into it before pushing it in front of her baby sister. Rilla took it, relaxing into her place and said over the lip of the stoneware with raised eyebrows, ' _Well_?'

'You've got to get reams of verse by rote first,' said Mara laughing.

'Oh yes,' said Nan, 'that too,' then ducked laughing to avoid the tea towel Mara threw at her. It caught Nan on the shoulder even so and Rilla laughed.

'Well _a nighean,_ will you try it?'

'The poetry maybe,' said Rilla as she nursed her cocoa. She was on the verge of saying more when the kettle hissed to life and a high kittenish whimpering came from overhead.

' _Jims!_ ' said Rilla, snatching the kettle off the stove and filling the hot water bottle expertly. She was skittering out of the kitchen before Jims could work himself up to outright crying, disappearing out of the kitchen with a self-remonstrative 'I _knew_ I ought to have brought him down!'

At the kitchen counter four faces disappeared into four sets of arms as they strove to stifle their amusement.

'I shouldn't laugh,' said Nan at last, 'but it gives me such a jolt to see Spider blossoming into this capable, competent young woman that if I don't laugh I'm liable to weep protestations against time for moving at a rate of knots.'

'It makes my soul glad,' said Anne Blythe, 'to know it isn't only me that feels that way about it.' Gracefully she slipped around the table bestowing kisses on the wakeful children, pink-eyed with lack of sleep , buoyed on hopefulness and so like the young women she and her own friends had once been, before taking the place her daughter had so lately vacated.

'We're into tomorrow,' she said warmly, 'and that wholly justifies me in wishing you Happy Christmas.'

It was. Much laughter was occasioned by an issue of _Punch_ Gilbert had found and stuck in Di's sock sporting a poem that soundly derided the rail service -Alastair and the girls who pinned hopes asserting it to be by far the gift of the hour. Better than that Santa Clause came to call shortly after breakfast resplendent in red and sporting something of a lopsided beard. If Jims was scandalized to see him kiss Mrs. Dr. Blythe, no one else gave it a thought. They exchanged gifts and good-wishes, hushed but heartfelt, and rejoiced at seeing the dining room so full. They talked across and around one another and Mara afterwards said to Nan as they tidied the plates away, 'How you could possibly rival my tribe of harridans for noise is beyond me -but you've nearly done it.'

'Years of practice,' said Nan affectionately. 'You haven't seen it with the boys at home.'

* * *

They left with real regret, and promises on both sides to keep in touch and visit often.

'And bring Mouse next time!' said Gilbert as they leaned out the window for a final goodbye. They assured him they would do their utmost to secure this for him, and then they were hurtling -no declassified train on _this_ journey -into 1918 and the term to come.


	26. Chapter 26

_Thank you to all of you reading and/or reviewing. I know I've been gone a while. This was another one of those chapters that stoically resisted being written. Hopefully the rest are more cooperative, but in the meantime, I hope you enjoy what there is of this one!_

* * *

'I thought you were putting all this lot in order?' said Poppy, coming into the sitting room. Nan, Di and Mara were gathered around the scrubbed pine table efforts divided between attempting to sort through letters pertaining life after Redmond and attending to coursework. They were partly hindered by Pilgrim, who in a sociable frame of mind had gone to sleep across Mara's left arm and the whole hind right corner of the table.

'We are,' said Di, not looking up from the letter she was penning.

'And this is order how?' asked Poppy, coming and hovering over Nan's shoulder.

'Just because you wouldn't call it –'

'Catkin, _no one_ would call this even half organised,' said Poppy and began to laugh. Carefully she reached into the maze of paper and began shuffling. 'Nan, Nan, Di, Nan again, Mara, Di, another for Nan, Di, Di again, Mara, Nan…Catkin, why do you have treble the amount of paperwork compared to the others?'

'Probably because she's been writing compulsively to people since at least October,' said Mara before disappearing back into _Electra._

'Late October,' said Nan. She began shuffling through her stack of letters, deftly and succinctly undoing Poppy's work. 'I wanted to make sure I had somewhere to go afterwards,' she said. 'It's not that I don't want to go back to Ingleside so much as I've got used to living in my own house. You know, eating meals in my own time, sitting up late into the night and not fretting about the light keeping anyone awake…organising the kitchen –'

'Oh yes,' said Poppy dryly, 'because you and I have _extensive_ control of the kitchen.'

Nan shrugged, unapologetic. 'You know what I mean.' They did. Poppy began to restack the letters, pausing over one in larger-than-usual size and thickness.

'Forgive me being nosey,' she said to Nan, 'but why is Redmond writing to you?'

'Oh that,' said Nan. 'That's my Indian Pipe dream. I wrote to them applying for an MLitt course. I suppose that will be their answer. It all depends of course on whether… '

She was cut off by so many excited exclamations.

'You did what?'

'You never said!'

'What did _they_ say?!'

'When were you going to mention it?'

Nan fended all of these off by flapping her hands in frantic gesture of communication. This proving ineffective she seized the letter and leveraged it as a flag, perhaps a standard. 'It depends on funding,' she said when they had quieted, much as if they had never interrupted. 'And whether I can get it, because Rilla's share of the education money ought to be…well for Rilla. And I wanted to do this myself. A whole other year of studying seems extravagant in the extreme, under the circumstances. The whole dream belongs to a world without a war.'

The others nodded understanding. Then impulsively from Mara, 'But you'd go? If you got the funding?' She looked as if someone had lighted her up with a candle.

'In an utopian daydream? I'd go in a minute. But now…'Nan shrugged, a gesture of great eloquence, Poppy thought. 'I still haven't made up my mind,' she said. This occasioned another onslaught of excitability and incredulity from all sides of the scrubbed pine table.

'Of course you'll go!'

'You must!'

'Catkin it's ideal for you.'

'I know, I know,' said Nan, laughing at their enthusiasm. 'No one wants this more than I do. But if I stay –stay here –it's another year I'm not saving towards a life with Jerry. After the war, I mean. And I know that might be another four years from now –but it might be tomorrow . And if it _is_ sooner rather than later…'Nan shrugged, helpless to say more. And yet Poppy thought, still articulating that much more than the rest of them could have hoped to achieve under the circumstances.

'I don't want to wait another four years after that to be married. I mean, it can be done –mums did it –but I've read the letters she wrote dad all through those years, and his answers…I've done so many hard things already. I don't want to endure one more.'

'Of course you don't,' said Poppy, reaching for Nan's hand and squeezing it.

'You shouldn't have to,' said Mara.

Nan pulled her stack of letters towards her and began reshuffling it. 'I expect I'll have to wait anyway,' she said, extracting a more innocuous letter from the pile. 'I don't want to prolong it unduly. I think that's all I mean.' She broke the seal and said almost casually as she extracted the letter in question though, 'but you're definitely staying, aren't you, and Ariel?'

'Are you?' said Poppy to Mara, surprised.

'Well it's being talked about, anyway,' said Mara to the depths the Sophocles, translation by a name Poppy couldn't read upsidedown. How cavalier they all were about the future! Poppy couldn't begin to imagine what hers was going to look like, except for a great gaping hole that was the absence of the other girls who pinned hopes. It hurt horribly. She ought to be pursuing the means and motives for Mara staying on in Kingsport, but since that too hurt to much she said instead, 'It was Shakespeare that first said all that nonsense about partings being sweet sorrow, wasn't it?'

'Mm,' said Mara, still to _Electra._ 'Why?'

'I was just wondering if he'd ever actually taken leave of anyone, that's all.'

'Oh,' said Mara. She folded her arms across her book, and offered Poppy a smile.

'We have months,' she said. 'Don't fret, Mouse. If we must have lasts they may as well be enjoyable ones.'

'Of course,' said Di. 'Besides, you never thought we'd let you drop out of our world so easily?'

Poppy had no idea. She was still having trouble envisaging the _afterward_. Would the war be over, or only almost over? Or would it go on another four years? It all seemed very complicated. Across from her Mara murmured, 'Good God, would it be more or less gruesome in the original, do you think,' and closed her book with resolution. Di appeared to be reading two letters at once, her forehead creased either in thoughtfulness or indecision. Poppy couldn't decide. She was more than willing to be pulled into one of Nan's absent-minded hugs as that young woman swapped letter writing for one of her economies. Nan was into the story's heart before it dawned on Poppy that this wasn't a proper economy, the usual from, _If I could wish for anything in the world…_ not having been observed. The world was teetering on a precipice, and in the process Nan's economies had turned into stories outright. What else, Poppy wondered as she listened, had changed?

* * *

In February, a cold but dry month, their number was augmented by Poppy's sister making good on a long-standing threat to visit.

'Mum's idea,' said Poppy to the others when she relayed the news. 'Jo's making noises about wanting to start at Redmond in the autumn and she wanted her to see it before making up her mind. I don't know why, considering I'd never seen Kingsport prior to that day we all met in the front garden.'

Jo –proper name Jocasta –arrived on the Swallowgate doorstep bearing the news of Jerricho's capture by the British and brimming with warmth and affection not only for Poppy, but all the girls who pinned hopes.

'Poppy's letters are full of you,' she said, 'I feel as if we met months ago.'

She had barely crossed the threshold before her given name was found too unwieldy and to the relief of all concerned, was dropped for Poppy's more manageable and sisterly nicknname. Smaller than Poppy, Jo had the same crop of dark hair ('You've cut it,' said Poppy on their reunion) but her eyes were blue and catlike to Poppy's grey owlish ones. They would have known her anywhere though for Poppy's sister; they had the same way of seeing all the good in the world and bringing it into focus. They loved her at once because she was Poppy's, but the sentiment seemed to be that they would have loved her anyway; it was impossible not to.

'It was her fault,' Poppy said later, once Jo had arrived 'that I was conscripted for Hero,' this to Mara, the others having always supposed Poppy's exposure to the dramatic begun and ended with her aiding Mara in the learning of her scripts.

'Only because no one else had the memory for so many lines,' said Jo. For this sisterly betrayal Poppy threw a pillow at her, not ungently, and they all laughed.

'I hadn't realised she was one of mine,' Mara said, 'you neglected to tell me, Mouse,' and the laughter increased.

* * *

It was a good month to visit; the term was in full throttle, Kingsport bursting with students.

'Even if, as Mara observed to Jo as they returned from a tour of the library, 'It looks like the scene from _The Convent of Pleasure_ that Cavendish forgot to write.'

'Or _Princess Ida_ , which I suppose comes to the same thing. But it won't always have been like this?'

'No,' said Mara, 'Definitely not.'

Poppy was in class for the afternoon, a slave to something by the dreadful name of convex geometry, and in her absence the rest of the girls had taken it upon themselves to entertain Jo, a protocol so reassuringly _normal_ that it was almost possible to forget the war. The weather continuing mild they went on long walks through the wood, where the snowdrops were blossoming, lingering by the frozen turtle pond at its midpoint to feed the returning red-winged blackbirds. The cardinals of course had never gone away, taking the swallows' place among the eaves back at Swallowgate. They showed off the Martello tower, the pond, the gazebo, and the old house on Spottiswood road, skirting only the St. John's graveyard because in the midst of war, at the muddy tail end to winter it struck all concerned as a demoralising haunt. 'Though of course,' said Nan, guiltily attempting to salvage some of its old glory, 'Mums loved it for walking in.'

They traversed the centre of town, pointing out here the lecture theatres, there the examination hall. They wandered down the wynds pointing out the best shops for haberdashery, gloves, ready-made clothes ('From a different world, of course,' said Di), the fishmonger who knew them by name ('You want,' advised Nan, 'to invoke Mara, if you mention us at all. They like her because she knows fish.'), the butcher from whom you could get a week's worth of meat at a discount ('Well,' said Poppy to be exact, 'five days' worth. And that may be symptomatic of the war. It's not exactly an extravagance of meat when you get it.).

Somehow the demands of the term fell out such that it was Poppy that pointed out the convocation hall and said of it, 'That's where they hold the graduations, but it's also where they stage the student productions,' and Mara who took her through the hushed halls of the library, the air thick with its smell of old book and dust. Mustiness, Poppy might have described it, but it was more than that. The sun filtered through the high stained glass windows of the building and splashed in dappled colour across the shelves adding a sacrosanct quality to the air. It was dazzling, not to say startling, to come out into the sun afterwards where people rushed pell-mell across roads and carts and horses rattled along the street as though life itself depended on it.

'You've come at completely the wrong time, of course,' said Poppy affectionately over dinner towards the end of Jo's stay. 'You'll miss seeing Arden. You ought to have come in the spring.'

'Oh,' said Nan, 'is that what the play is this year? _As You Like it_?'

''Fancy a guess who they've made Rosalind?' said Poppy, laughingly.

Jo said, 'Oh I don't know, I may come back for your graduation. Would I catch it then?'

'Very likely,' said Mara.

'You haven't got to do that,' said Poppy, meaning the graduation.

'Well someone should,' Jo said, 'and I want to. I like it here.'

'We haven't frightened you away then?' said Di, occasioning much laughter. Jo shook her head and waved a hand, surprising them with this sudden display of similarity to Poppy. They looked alike, but didn't generally act it.

'You'll be in good company anyway,' said Mara. 'Alastair's making noises about coming out here himself, if it proves possible.'

'He's reading maths, isn't he,' said Di, 'or planning on it?'

'That's right, the better to rebuild the harbour, he says. Though how that stems from so many equations…Mouse, we've got our siblings the wrong way round, don't you think?'

'Very definitely,' said Poppy. 'All they need is someone to come and read English. Are you _sure_ your Spider can't be convinced Di, Nan?'

'Absolutely,' they said in a rare moment of unison, making the others laugh. 'Though I think,' said Di, 'that Ruthie's sister is considering English. Or philosophy. Both, if she can't make up her mind. She's certainly clever enough.'

There was more laughter. Poppy began to gather up the plates. Mara took over, neatly lifting the amassed plates from Poppy's hands and exhorting her to enjoy the remained of her sister's visit. Di went to put the kettle on, because 'We're not rationing hospitality.'

''However it turns out,' said Nan to Jo as they awaited the tea and the others, 'we'll wish you every good thing. A peaceable four years, a little ivied house, fellowship and adventures enough to balance the academic rigours and friendships to last.'

'Catkin,' said Poppy, 'that's almost a poem. We'd never have guessed.'

'A story maybe,' said Nan. Then she leaned back in her chair, picked up a neglected desert spoon and twisting it between her fingers, began one of her economies.

There was the inevitable leaden feeling of absence when Jo left, a hollowness in the chest that was exacerbated by the news of Germany's ongoing crusade against Eastern Europe. The girls leavened it as much as possible by sitting up late into the night on the first evening, recapitulating the visit to one another. By the time the sun came up they had fallen back into their old selves, pinning hopes, Walter would have said, and piecing lives. The sky grew purple with sunrise, and they stood at the windows watching it, their breath misting the glass, Nan, Di, Poppy and Mara. They were talking about coursework by then, the merits of _Back of the North Wind_ , the motifs predominant in _Galetea_ , lofty themes that only half held their attention. As the sun rose the girls who pinned hopes looked out at the horizon and scanned it as a collective for that one good thing that would lay the foundation of the futures they were building. The stars winked out but the moon lingered, a fingerling of new light not yet eclipsed, encircled by the ghost of its former self.

'Holding water, they call that,' said Mara, seeing it.

'New moon with the old, I was going to say,' Poppy said.

'Good or bad?' Di wanted to know.

'Good, I think,' said Mara, and they supposed that for the time being, that would have to be enough.

* * *

 _For anyone who didn't have obscure dramas rammed down their throat by high order of a Scottish university, The Convent of Pleasure is about a women's college that foreswears men. Sort of. In the way of Restoration comedy it's all a bit convoluted, but it ends, as I recall, in a marriage. As is observed, if you've seen the Gilbert and Sulivan Princess Ida, you know the plot. They just put music to it. _


	27. Chapter 27

_N.B. According to Rilla of Ingleside, Jem is reported missing in May. I have, however, for reasons of Narativium, made the executive decision to push this back to April, as will become apparent. Suffice it to say that closely adhering to Maud's timeline makes wrapping this story up in a timely fashion considerably trickier. The characters continue to remain hers, the story inspired by her, and I am, as always, grateful for all of you reading and/or reviewing. _

* * *

_Swallowgate,_

 _Kingsport,_

 _April 1918_

 _Dear Mums,_

 _It has been a grisly week. Nothing but freezing rain in sheets that sounds like one of Jem's descriptions of rapid-artillery fire, and cold draughts that curl around our feet and make the fire splutter. In a book it would make for some impressive cosmic sympathy. In life it makes for miserable, clammy days that all the afghans in the world can't atone for (and yes, we've been practically built nests out of the ones you sent us home with)._

 _I suppose dad will have told you by now about his visit –thank him again for coming. And thank you for braving the world without him, you and Susan and Rilla. I know it can't be easy, because when he turned up I thought 'We'll make him so comfortable that he won't ever go away and we won't have to manage without him.' I think I meant it too –though of course that isn't what happened._

 _We'd had a letter from Faith earlier that week crammed with all kinds of things, but nestled in among it was news of Jem. I was reading aloud to the others and when I got to that part I just stopped short. I didn't say anything for so long that Poppy said, 'Lost your place?'_

 _I opened my mouth to tell her no, and all I could say instead was 'Oh bloody,_ _bloody_ _hell.' You tell me, will Susan or Miss Cornelia be the more horrified? You won't be; you quite sensibly despaired_ _years_ _ago of making tame clawless creatures of Di and me. Reassure Susan that her best efforts haven't completely failed though, because when Mara had blinked away her surprise, all she said was, 'Do you know Catkin, in over three years I don't think I've ever heard you swear before.'_

 _'Faith always said,' I began, but Mara finished the thought for me. 'It isn't swearing when it's a prayer. I remember. Do we want to know what's occasioned it?'_

 _They didn't of course, or rather I didn't want to have to tell them, but I could hardly keep a thing like Jem's disappeared status secret from them for any length of time, and didn't much fancy trying. It's silly, even a bit childish but just then, with the news there in my hand, I wanted someone to cuddle and coddle me like a child. I wanted_ _you_ _mumsie. I made do with an extra afghan and hot, sweet tea, an India blend Mara has discovered that is better for the lack of milk. (Yes it's still blue, no it no longer matters a jot.)_

 _And because I still didn't know how to tell them, I gave up and said baldly, 'Jem's missing,' and handed the letter to Di so that she could absorb all the details as Faith knew them. Those weren't many, by the by, but it didn't stop Di practically clawing at the letter for information._

 _'When?' she said, scanning the letter for the place I'd broke off, 'and why for God's sake didn't she_ _start_ _with that titbit?'_

 _That_ _I had an answer for, having told enough stories to know the value of building up to moments of tension. It seemed such a stupid, trite answer though that I didn't say anything. I felt terribly cold in spite of the fire, the tea and the blanket, and was beginning to wonder if the freezing rain had somehow got inside of me when Di climbed into the chair I was nestled in and pulled me into a hug._

 _We'd all have coped much better I think had it not been lion-hearted Jem, and had the news not come on the heels of that garbled report of shelling Paris. The unspeakable relief when Peter came rushing into the house on that inauspicious Tuesday to tell us it was only St Quentin being shelled and that from 70 miles away!_

 _But as it happened, it_ _was_ _Jem, our battle-brave firebrand with his love for larks, and the thing was, if disaster could touch even him then it seemed somehow that it could touch anyone. Even Poppy and Mara, how have only anecdotes to go on, seemed to feel the weight of this sentiment._

 _Poppy took over the letter-reading. There followed a grisly account of an amputation, and Di surprised me by saying 'I'm glad she doesn't make such confessions to the rest of us. She must think you'll have use of them in your economies.'_

 _I said that by now Faith's capacity to imagine the worst probably made my efforts look positively saccharine. I don't mind though –everyone needs a confessional I think, and not everyone has you, mums._

 _Once the report of the amputation had been got through though, Faith proved stubbornly convinced that Jem hadn't died. She couldn't give a single concrete reason, but the conviction was contagious, and while the others prepared dinner, I went to pay a visit to Aunt Phil._

 _I wanted the phone to get in touch with Ingleside but I obviously made a mess of explaining this because I'd no sooner imparted the news then she had shunted me into the parlour and was foisting tea on me. I gulped it down practically at boiling point and finally –after what seemed interminable small talk about my degree, as if it mattered –I got hold of a phone. Susan picked up and when I demanded that she go to the station and ask after Monday. I think she thought I'd finally gone insane. She promised me she would go though, so we rang off and Aunt Phil force-fed me more tea and we discussed the merits of Gaskell's_ _Ruth_ _(of which, by the by, there are none to speak of). After the longest hour of my life Susan called back to say that Dog Monday had_ _not_ _howled himself blue any time in recent memory. I conclude therefore, that Jem is alive, because Dog Monday loved Jem, and if he cried for Walter he would surely acknowledge the death of his master._

 _I told all this to dad when he came and he said that it made no sense. Then he laughed and hugged the breath out of me and said that I'd convinced him –that I had your way of thinking, which may be the best compliment anyone ever gives me –and begged me for the love of things holy_ _not_ _to use that kind of logic as the foundation work of my honours essays. I was revelling in seeing him laugh, so I told him I'd been using logic like that for years, that the secret to a successful English degree was to argue whatever you fancied with great conviction and reference to the text._

 _'For heaven's sake, don't let your mother hear you say that,' he said._

 _I made no such promise and said I thought the odds favoured you agreeing. That made him laugh again, and the laughter brought the others into the hallway. He'd been holding me, blankets and all in his arms, but somehow he disentangled an arm sufficiently in time to catch Di as she flew to him like a compass bound norward._

 _'I came to tell you about Jem,' said dad needlessly, 'but I gather you already know. I wonder; did Faith know what it meant, Wounded and Missing? That's the question of the hour back at Ingleside and I'm as much in the dark as anyone. I don't like it,' he added as an afterthought, and just for a minute I saw the boy that had had the nerve to pull your hair and call you 'Carrots' instead of my father. Di began a garbled account of my journey to Patterson street and dad held up a hand saying, 'I know that too. Dog Monday has now assumed the mantel of prophet in addition to faithful hound. I've been hearing all about it, and more doubtful men than myself would be persuaded.'_

 _He was still dripping with rain –the icy outpouring from the heavens not having felt any special need to let up in honour of his visit –and with the worst over, Di and I began to take notice of this. I got his coat off him, and Di seized his hat, and wrung it out with such efficacy that really its continued existence as a serviceable hat is its own small miracle. Then he allowed us to half-pull half-lead him into the sitting room, where we pushed him into the squashiest of the chairs. He was duly swallowed by it and while I rekindled a guttering fire, and Mara fussed over tea, Di threw one of the afghans at him. He struggled out of it, took notice of the cold seeping under the windows and proceeded to roll himself in it as one would roll a cigar. He looked remarkably cosy, but also like a woolly beacon of autumn since the afghan in question was all oranges and browns._

 _Mara re-emerged then with the tea and dad said while she and Di fought for control of the service, 'Seeing as I can't tell you about Jem, and_ _it's about time I came to you with good news, has anyone told you Susan's latest anecdote testifying to the imminent crushing of the Germans?'_

 _They hadn't, but of course we were all anxious to hear. Dad was delighted. That absurd afghan and the fact that he was practically submerged in his chair notwithstanding he stretched out his legs and relaxed into what Di and I used to call 'storytelling mode.'_

 _'Good,' he said. 'Much too good to waste on a letter.'_

 _Why_ _didn't you tell us about Roderick MacCallum foiling the German Censor with that scribbled bit of Gaelic? I should be cross at you for withholding such_ _gem of a story_ _but actually, I agree with dad. Nothing could compare to hearing the story narrated, especially since once he'd got to the bit about Roderick tucking those Gaelic words into his signature he turned to Mara and said, 'All I could think was that you lot put letters_ _in_ _where they don't belong –'_

 _And that was as far as he got before Mara said somewhere between genuine and playful indignation, 'We do not!'_

 _Dad was adamant. Apparently he's written out enough birth certificates to know the shape and look of Gaelic if not the sound of it. 'All those Ds,' he said, 'and Hs and what have you where there are no business being Ds and Hs. What you_ _don't_ _do is leave letters out, so how Roderick ever made whatever-it-was fit…'_

 _He was spared this conundrum because Mara interjected again, 'A h-uile bhreugan, that would be.'_

 _'So he_ _would_ _have to have been writing sideways,' said dad, triumphant._

 _'I didn't say that,' said Mara._

 _I said she hardly had to, and dad, because apparently the sport of baiting intelligent women is one that never grows old, made her spell it. 'Illustrative purposes,' said dad. 'To add realism to the story.'_

 _Somehow he escaped with life and limbs in tact, Mara being naturally inclined towards laughter herself. We just haven't had much cause for it lately. That's the other thing you must thank him for; we needed that laugh even more than we needed his visit, I think._

 _On another note entirely, Redmond has made an offer of funding for next year, should I accept the place, so you can tell Rilla she may have her share of the money for her wedding, as and when that happens. My economies might be fanciful things designed to keep chaos at bay, but I hope I'm practical enough to know the sterling worth of social occasions –especially ones engineered by Susan in the face of a rationed pantry._

 _As to what I'll actually do though –I begin to think Ruthie's indecision is catching. Poppy and Mara both rather like the idea of me continuing here like some sort of good fairy for Jo and Alastair should they have need of one. I tend to think that they won't be short of those, since Mara isn't actually_ _going_ _anywhere; a handful of the drama set are in the throes of creating a troupe with its roots here and want her for that, and Una will be starting herself. It should go without saying that both of are much better equipped to mediate in affairs of housekeeping than I am, especially given my infrequent control of affairs at Swallowgate!_

 _If I could wave a wand though and do anything I liked, I'd come down on the side of this second degree. It wouldn't be remotely practical, or productive and I doubt I could put it to much use after the war, or even after I'd finished, and of course it would entail any number of sacrifices, but I want it fiercely. Write and offer your opinion, won't you? I'm collecting them._

 _Thinking of you, with love and blessings,_

 _Nan_


	28. Chapter 28

_As ever thank you to all of you reading and/or reviewing. I know I've been sporadic, but I've finally got the last few chapters pinned in place, so the last few chapters shouldn't take quite so long to get to you._

* * *

By May the weather had softened, and grown warm, the air thickly smelling of narcissi, sycamore and fresh-cut grass. The days were long and the light stretched late into the evening casting shadows that ran the length of the Swallowgate sitting room. It was idyllic if not conducive towards revision for the ever-looming exams. Presently the girls were gathered among the squashy chairs, sewing discarded in favour of Faith's latest letter.

 _Beware heliotrope cyanosis_ it began, minus its customary greeting to the girls who pinned hopes. Mara, who had the reading of it, noticed this and broke off, frowning.

'Headache bothering you?' asked Poppy.

'In fact I was wondering why Faith can't write a letter in English the way normal people do. But as you mention it, that too.'

'My fault,' said Nan, reaching for the letter. 'You caught that spring cold off of me, I'd lay money on it.'

'Heliotrope cyanosis,' said Mara, ignoring headache and diversions both. 'Does anyone know what it is?'

'It sounds like the sort of flower Mara would pick in the woods and put by,' said Nan, now struggling to decipher Faith's handwriting.

'It sounds Greek,' said Poppy, surprising them. Seeing this she shrugged and said, 'I picked up the odd word when Faith was dabbling in it back in first year. Something blue?'

'Right, we'll take care then, no blue flowers,' said Mara and pressed her hands to her eyes to fend off the light.

'That's it,' said Poppy, rising, 'I'm making tea. Don't come to any conclusions without me.'

'Mouse,' said Mara through her fingers, 'I don't need –'

'Well you _look_ as if you did,' said Poppy. 'Besides, it will do us all good. Stop us from lying awake all night running mentally through revision until sun-up.'

She went and in the lull her absence occasioned Mara crossed to the windows and drew the curtains. In the shelter they afforded she pressed her forehead against the lead of the frame and the throbbing in her temples eased.

'All right?' said Nan from her corner of the floor.

'Nothing Poppy's tea won't settle,' said Mara.

'I thought you didn't need it?'

'Well. Perhaps a little.'

Poppy returned, china rattling and knelt awkwardly, trying to preserve the contents of her tea tray. Brewed from feverfew and camomile it tasted sharply of hay and dust, and the scent one got from breaking holly stocks. It galled the inside of the throat a little and stung Mara's sinuses. She must have grimaced because Poppy said apologetically, 'we're out of honey. I'm sorry.'

Mara cupped her hands around the cherry blossom china and held it level with her lips, letting the steam soothe her nose. 'Never mind, Mouse. It's not the taste that's important. Though,' with a smile, 'I'll be glad to be rid of it.'

* * *

It didn't go though, or even lessen. Rather Mara's headaches increased in intensity as the exams approached, a circumstance she used to illustrate her argument that they induced by revision. Confronted with the collective insistence that exams had never provoked headaches in her before, Mara argued that the previous years' exams had never mattered so much. Then Di began to complain of them, and more than that, of a prickling in her throat, 'As if it were full of pebbles,' she said. She sounded as if this were true too. But when pressed by the others, she took Mara's part saying ,'We could all do with a day away from our books, I think.'

Accordingly they spent an indulgent day searching the stores for graduation clothing. Nan favoured a lustrous gold organdie with a narrow waist and embossed yoke, Poppy a lavender taffeta with buttons like pearls. Di was struck by a green crepe and Mara by a watery blue silk that seemed far too extravagant under the circumstances. Nan wouldn't let her give it up though.

'We don't get occasions often,' she said.

'That's rather the argument against it, you,' said Mara and laughed.

'No, I mean it will still have wear in it for other occasions –for _after_. And there will be an after, and there will be lots of occasions then.'

'Oh? Name one, can you?'

'Well,' said Nan with affected consideration, 'Jem's wedding, I shouldn't wonder. He'll never wait until the end of his stint here, you watch. '

'Faith might have a word about that, don't you think?'

'Of course I do –but it will be an affirmative one. I 'm right, Ariel, you know I am.'

'No,' said Mara, 'but I know better than to argue with you in a mood like this.'

They hunted gloves and hats, and seized by the spirit of the day had lunch out in a tea room on Mercat street. The tea was weak, the air stuffy and the irises on the table beginning to fray, but it was the first time they had eaten out in months and they felt the full luxury of it like a golden, smooth and sheer as a satin wrap.

Later, satisfied with their treasures, they took a picnic into the woods. It was only cold potatoes and a light salad, but Nan built a fire and Mara guddled fish and a feast sprung up almost effortlessly before them.

They ate the fish with their fingers, mindful of singeing them, and cooled their hands in the river afterwards.

'You see,' said Di, 'Good as new. All of us.'

It couldn't last though; Mara felt the rising pulse of a headache even as they came into Swallowgate. Poppy's cheeks were bright with exertion, and Nan too, but Di fell into one of the squashy chairs with an exhaustion that seemed etched bone-deep.

'Our next day off is going to be spent here,' said Mara seeing her, 'preferably playing patience or something equally mindless.'

'We needed an occasion,' said Di, but her throat was hoarse again, whether from the evening breeze or Nan's spring cold no one could have said.

* * *

'Would it be worth asking to defer the exam?' said Poppy on the evening before Mara's final exams begun.

'Hardly,' Mara said. 'A day or two ago, maybe, but not now.'

'Only,' said Poppy, ignoring Mara, 'it doesn't sound like revisionitus anymore. And there _is_ supposed to be something going round the houses.'

'Is there? Now you tell me.'

'I only just heard. One of the boys at Peter's boarding house has got it, and from the sound of things, so has half the student body. I'm sure if I went and spoke with…'

'Mouse,' said Mara affectionately, 'there are maybe six good days in the year when I can do what I do well. On none of them am I asked to perform. I can sit an exam with a headache.'

It was more than a headache. She sat her first exam with chills dancing down the length of her spine, skin prickled in gooseflesh. Halfway through a comparative essay on Ibsen and Strindberg, God expressed his sense of humour by sending a smith to set up shop in her head and fire anvils there. She paused long enough on her final essay, about the reality of _A Doll's House_ to drum her fingers against her forehead. It didn't lessen the throbbing, but it made her feel she could do something about it. The second set of exams made her eyes ache. She was tolerably sure that whatever-it-was had turned into a head cold and would break out in good earnest the moment she allowed her body to relax. She wrote about stagecraft in _Peter Gynt_ while fighting against the haze of cotton wool that was trying to cover her brain.

Di's experience must have been similar because when they met in the quad afterwards, eyes watering in the sunlight and free forever of the evil of written examination, she said to Mara, 'The nice thing about a degree you enjoy is that you can write it pretty well under any circumstance and acquit yourself with competence.'

'Better, of course, if the circumstance is agreeable in the first place,' said Mara.

* * *

The heyday of exams over, Mara relaxed into the sudden expanse of leisure time that had opened between exams and _As You Like It_ , and the head cold, seizing its chance blossomed into fever. She wasn't aware of it happening but woke two days after her last exam stifled by the weight of the bedspread.

'You've got apple spots,' Poppy said, looking up from pinning her hair.

'Have I?' asked Mara. She put her hand to one cheek, half expecting to feel the change. She couldn't, but she had no trouble believing it, as she was also under the distinct impression that the light was too bright, and her skin had shrunk half a size. She was going to observe as much to Poppy when mercifully the world dropped away and darkness fell.

Mara could never accurately account for the days that followed. She retained a shadowy sketch of Poppy hovering suddenly and improbably tall over her, the apple-scent of Nan tied to news ( _what?_ ) about Di, and Pilgrim at her feet, always at her feet like an Egyptian Sphinx, daring anything to harm her. When it passed she woke too see Poppy owl-eyed and anxious, her face patterned with the leaves of the sycamores from the angle the sun struck her.

'You're _awake_ ' said Poppy. She lunged for and squeezed Mara's hand through the quilt with a relief forcible as a gale.

'Oh God, you're _awake_.'

'You've got apple spots,' said Mara.

* * *

That was why, when it came not the point, it was Mara who spoke with Poppy's lecturer and not the other way around.

'It's a waste of energy,' said Poppy, 'he'll hate it.'

'He'll cope,' said Mara stopping Poppy in the act of prising a damp cloth off her forehead. 'And you'll get over this. What exactly did you _do_ when I had it?'

'Can't'member' said Poppy thickly. 'Headhurts.'

It occurred to Mara to tease her about her stubbornness, but then she looked at the apple-spots in the hollows of Poppy's cheeks, saw that they had darkened to plum and changed her mind.

'Go to sleep, _a charaid_ ,' she said instead.

* * *

Poppy wasn't wrong about her lecturer. Confronted with Mara, still spectre-pale from recent illness and harrowed with nursing, he said immoveably, 'This fever, I take it that it impedes her handwriting?'

'No,' said Mara, 'her breathing,' and turning on her heel she stalked off in a whirlwind.

She hadn't said it to shock either. She had left Poppy with a disconcerting rattle in her throat. It had appeared overnight, a skeletal sound like autumn leaves in a gale. At first, with a thought for her sister's wee, asthmatic Duncan, she had sat beside her Poppy and breathed through pursed lips. Nan, observing her, had left off her news of Di (none of it good) and had done it too. Wakeful, Poppy had seemed just present enough to catch on, but asleep her breathing had become shallow and Mara gave up. At any rate the rale wasn't bad; she had to press her ear to Poppy's chest to hear it. Still, a traitorous voice whispered to her that it too, like the fever, could worsen.

This it did in due course, progressing from rustle to susuration to a racking that hurt to listen to, much less experience.

'Had we better write to your father, do you think?' asked Mara of Nan in the small hours of one mizzley May morning.

'Yes,' said Nan. 'I know all the talk in town calls this a fever, but the more it goes on the more it begins to remind me of the year mums had pneumonia. We haven't got Faith, and Mara if that's what it is –'

'Don't you _dare_ finish that thought,' said Mara. The words came out almost in a hiss, startling Pilgrim, who had hitherto been asleep on her knees.

'Sorry,' said Nan.

'Don't be. Go be useful and write to people who can do something about it.'

Nan went, and it seemed that just the act of writing was enough. It often felt in the days that followed that they had been granted if not grace then perhaps stasis, as neither Di nor Poppy worsened notably. Their cheeks still were the purple of damsons neither had they darkened. And always, horribly like the hum of some perverse cicada, the mucous rale in their throats. It was a rattle, a shudder, a whirlwind and it terrified them all equally. It seemed days that they battled it, Mara and Nan with cold cloths and steam, Poppy and Di from nests of blankets. In the long, grim hours between sunset and sunrise, Faith's letter came back to them, _Beware heliotrope cynaosis_.

'But we can't be,' said Mara to the kitchen as she stood boiling water for tea of feverfew and camomile. 'We can't beware of it, because you _never said what it bloody was_.' She threw the tea towel she had wrapped her hand and didn't miss it until the handle of the kettle scalded her palm. She brought it away with a hiss, but it was a small thing at the end of the day, only an angry patch of skin and as nothing next to the hurt she might be asked to bear.

* * *

As when Mara had been ill, Pilgrim took up residence at the foot of Poppy's bed, and absurdly that heartened Mara. He sat their with his ears laid flat, daring anyone to move him. Once Mara had, forcibly extracting his claws from the quilt in order to change the linen. On that occasion he had sprang from her arms like a canon to settle on the bedpost, where he sat like an aggrieved deity until Poppy was back in bed, the quilts pulled up to her chin. Then he lay down at her feet, severe and sphinx-like as ever.

'There's a ghost,' said Poppy, 'just there, do you see?'

Mara looked, not out of any expectation to see a ghost, but because Poppy looked so _sure_. Here eyes were wide, she was looking at _something_.

'Anyone we know?' said Mara. She was trying to keep terror out of her voice. She could feel it, raw and primal running through her veins, in the pulse of her neck.

'No,' said Poppy. 'I don't think so. Can't you see? Just there.' She pointed for amplification. Mara fixed on the corner that fascinated Poppy and forcibly choked down a wave of fear. Pilgrim was still there on the bed, his fur bristled and ears flat. Pilgrim wouldn't give Poppy over to the ghost, if that's what it was.

 _Nonsense_ , Mara thought, but it was trust to nonsense or give in to panic. She couldn't panic because if she did she would be no help to Poppy, and if she couldn't help Poppy –but she wouldn't think about that. Nothing was going to happen to Poppy because she was going to keep her head and battle the fever at least until Dr. Blythe could get to them. He was coming, Nan swore he was coming, though it had been nearly a week and they hadn't heard from him. But Nan swore he was coming, so Mara swore it to, and until he could get to them, Pilgrim would keep the ghosts at bay.

'You,' Mara said, seizing Poppy's hand in hers, 'are not allowed go away, _a charaid_ , have you got that? You. Are. Not. Allowed. To. Go. Away.'

'And that,' said a voice from the murky dark, 'is doctor's orders.'


	29. Chapter 29

_Originally I had grand ideas of benevolence wherein I submitted this chapter early. Then a lot of boxes arrived from Scotland and I had to lug them up to my part of the house and unpack them. I was also labouring under what I now realise was the touching delusion I could resolve this particular episode in a chapter. Expect it instead in the next chapter. As ever, thank you for reading and/or reviewing, and for your continued patience. I hope to have something resembling regular updates again by this time next week._

* * *

'I'd have come sooner,' said Gilbert, by now sitting at the scrubbed pine table, gratefully accepting a mug of Darjeeling in cherry blossom stamp. It was too late and too dire an hour for things as fussy and delicate as teacups.

'I'd have come sooner but I was called to tend people in Harbour head and never got your letter until I came back yesterday. I set out as soon as I could.'

'I thought,' said Nan, scrabbling even now for her cache of Glen gossip, 'that Harbour head had its own doctor?'

'It had,' agreed Gilbert. 'He's dead of the flu our girls have got. You really should go away to Phil or someone until after –'

Improbably, Nan dared to laugh. 'Aunt Phil is up to her elbows in nursing the parish. And besides, they caught it off of _us_ , didn't I say?'

'They –you –no,' said Gilbert Blythe, for once caught without words. Then he was crushing them to him in spite of the table, the tea things and the smell of fever that clung to them. He had it too, of course, camphor, waste, and all the potent smells of sickness and death mixed with the coal, grime and horsey smell of travel.

'Why in God's name did no one write to me then?'

'We didn't realise,' said Nan. 'I didn't even realise I had it until afterwards, when Mara came down with it. It was like a bad head cold on top of a cramp.'

'I'll take your word for it,' said Mara, and even though they were by then laughing against his ribs, a little worn, perhaps but healthy and hale, Gilbert crushed them closer, and held them harder.

'Thank God you're all right,' he said. And then for good measure, more to himself than to them, 'Thank God.'

'Your tea will go cold,' said Mara when the giddiness of the moment had ebbed. Gilbert let them go and picked up the mug as if he were seeing it for the first time.

'Right,' he said, 'tea,' and swallowed it in two gulps. Then he set a hand one on each girl's shoulder and said, 'Now go to sleep. We've work to do in the morning.'

'But,' said Nan, 'What if they need…'

'I'll do it,' said Gilbert. 'I'm here now. Sleep.'

* * *

… _We went, elbows linked, turned in towards one another in the way that Di always used to say made us look like a salt and pepper set. We didn't say, but by mutual agreement we arrived at the tower room –Mara's old room as was. I'd almost forgotten it was hers, I've got that used to having her in the room ajoining mine and Di's. It was cool after being so long unused, and after the stuffiness of the sick rooms I can't tell you what a relief that was. We'd been breathing in illness so long we'd got used to it, but it wasn't in the tower room. It smelled cleanly of the sycamores under the window, the cloves still in their dish on the table to keep moths away and that warm, almost musty smell the sun leaves behind._

 _As we lay there on the Steps to the Altar quilt Mara said, 'do you know, it must be a year at least since I was here.'_

 _'More than that, surely,' I said. Then I rolled towards the window and the moon where it was bleeding all unfettered through the window. It was all round and swollen with light, and if I squinted I could just see on the sill the burl of the wood darkened by the merest of dashes of blood. That brought our talk over the holidays back, and it hardly seemed a surprise when Mara said, 'It made a safe place to retreat to. A sanctuary from the world if you like.'_

 _'God knows we've needed one often enough,' I said._

 _I was beginning to miss Di and the evenings we used to curl up under the covers together when I felt the coolness of Mara's fingers unpinning my hair. I relaxed into the comfort of it almost without thinking –Di had always liked to play with my hair before falling asleep, ever since we were children._

 _'She will another time,' said Mara, and I realised I must have said this aloud. 'For now though, let me.'_

 _I closed my eyes and but for the whisper of Mara's Gaelic, 'Ta mi cur m'anama's mo chrop…' it was almost like those far away evenings with Di that I was missing. Mara's fingers are longer of course, and she's much more practiced –I've watched her dress the little girls' hair at Anchorage often enough to know that – and I'd have to swap our sycamores for the sweetbriar and mint of Ingleside, but otherwise, no, not so different._

 _Mara was still murmuring whatever-it –was 'An Triuir a sheasdh mo chuis…'_

 _'What does it mean?' I asked drowsily and I felt the jar of her consciousness as I pulled her back to worldly things._

 _'A prayer,' said Mara. 'Before sleeping. I think maybe we both need it, Catkin, and I think maybe we'll not get there without a guide.'_

 _'No,' I said, 'Teach it to me?'_

 _I turned to face Mara, folding my hands into hers. I really did mean it, but if we got further than that in the lesson, I can't remember. Honestly mums, I think I blinked and then the sun was streaming in through the window and we were draped in the spare blanket; dad must have looked in to see we'd followed his orders and covered us with it. I don't know. What I can tell you is that as I lay there in the first flush of sunlight, I was_ _very_ _much aware of a hammering on the front door the like of which Swallowgate had never heard before…_

* * *

' _Do_ hold on,' said Nan as she struggled up from under the blanket and scrubbed at her eyes.

'Half a minute,' said Mara to nothing in particular, 'we're coming.'

They wasted no time in running down the stairs, still sleep-crumpled and in yesterday's clothes. As Mara observed to Nan on the turn to the second-story landing, 'No one ever calls like that but it's bad news.'

'Don't,' said Nan, propelling herself down the stairs two at a time. 'I haven't the stomach for any more bad news.'

Downstairs they were confronted by the inexpert sounds of someone trying and failing to navigate a strange kitchen. This supposition was born out by the appearance of an apron-clad Gilbert in the kitchen doorframe, holding a teapot in one hand and inquiring of the girls, 'where is –' They never did hear what it was he was looking for; they were in the hall and negotiating side tables of shepherdesses long before he finished.

The door swung open to admit of a wild-eyed Peter, who, seeing them said 'Why didn't you say? I've only just heard. I thought it must be bad when she wasn't at the exam the other day but I thought if it were serious someone would have sent word…'

'We had nowhere to send it to,' said Nan, realising as she said it how much she meant it. He might have joined on occasion with their sewing evenings, but given that she and the others had long ago taken to melting out of the room on the days Peter appeared they still only knew him to nod to. Apparently Peter realized this too because he deflated considerably and said, 'I never thought of that.'

'No well, no one's much for thinking sanely at the moment,' said Mara. The others made noises of agreement and Peter tried to press past them into the house, then stumbled, finding the way barred. Gently Mara pushed him off the stoop, and tugged Nan out into the garden with her.

'But I must see…'

'I really _don't_ need,' said Mara, 'to explain to Poppy why and how you've contracted the awful thing when she recovers. None of us does.'

'No,' said Peter, retreating to the shelter of a sycamore and settling there. 'I _can_ stay though?'

'Yes well –I really don't think we'd succeed at moving you,' said Nan.

* * *

 _…I wasn't sure if I should laugh or cry at the sight of him sat so resolutely under that avenue of sycamores. In fact mums, I did neither. When it became apparent Peter wasn't going anywhere, we took to eating our meals out in the garden with him. After all, we were bringing him things to eat as it was –well we could hardly let him go hungry on top of all the rest. Dad, by the by, thoroughly approved this plan. It possesses, and I quote, 'the double virtues of fresh air and good company.' Doesn't that sound like him? Neither Mara nor I has the energy to argue with him. In any case, he likes Peter because he sees some of himself in him –or that's my theory._

 _Those firest days though mums, they were painful. There was little to talk about even_ _remotely_ _conducive to light conversation. We'd all read different subjects, of course, and the fever has to get worse before it gets better. That's dad again –and mumsie, I wish I knew what that meant. How much worse? What will that look like? Neither Mara or I can imagine anything worse than the present, and we can't say_ _that_ _, much less that we lie awake trying to envisage what that might look like. But we had to talk of something, and the weather continuing mild, we discussed the dryness of the season at such length that I have since vowed to Mara that I will never invoke the weather again as a means of perpetuating conversation._

 _'I hereby hand over all small talk to you, Ariel,' I said at the end of an especially trying day._

 _'Traitor,' said Mara. After though she pulled me into a hug, which was proof if ever it were needed that she knows just as well as I do the trial of optimism. That has ever been Poppy's gift. Still is, God willing._

* * *

It had to get worse before it got better, so Dr. Blythe said. In the little arfterthought of a room that was theirs, Poppy murmured fretfully about ghosts and Mara held on to this sentiment of the doctor's like a lifeline. _It must get worse before it gets better_. But how much worse, and what would that look like?

'See how high the moon is,' said Poppy. 'Almost like a second sun. Not what you'd call holding water though, is it?'

'It's not just me that says you can't go away,' said Mara, ignoring this. 'Do you know that? There's a lad outside, who by your account _isn't_ courting you, who refuses to leave the sycamores, and who can't be let in lest he catch the illness too. It's got a name now, did you know that? The blue death, Dr Blythe says they're calling it. Not a proper name like Rubella or Typhoid, but they don't know what it is and I suppose they must call it something. If you can name it, you know, you can maybe control it.'

'The horses,' said Poppy, 'they're meant to herald the end of the world. But they can't if we've killed them all, can they?'

'It's not your horses I'm worried for, Mouse,' said Mara. She wrapped her hand tight around Poppy's small broad one and lacking any better resource, began to pray.

* * *

'That had better not be one of your prayers for the dead and dying,' said Gilbert, coming into the room.

'But they are dying,' said Mara, 'aren't they?'

'No one,' Gilbert said, 'is going to die.'

Mara shook her head and seemed to smile at him. 'But people do,' she said. 'All the time.'

'No one is going to die.'

'Do you mean that, said Mara, 'or do you need me to believe it?'

'Does it matter?'

'There are many risks I'd take,' said Mara softly. 'Mouse's soul isn't one of them. If you don't mean it, tell me.'

'I thought despair was supposed to be unforgiveable,' said Gilbert, 'because it meant turning from God? Isn't that right?'

'It isn't despairing to look death in the eye and be practical about it.'

'No one,' said Gilbert stubbornly, 'is going to die. I mean it.'

'Good,' said Mara, letting go Poppy's hands. 'Then tell me what needs doing.'

* * *

Gilbert did. It seemed in the haze of days that succeeded his arrival they lived like moths, flitting from moment to moment. None of them dared look beyond the present for fear of what it would hold. There were days when it felt as if they hardly paused for breath, others when it seemed they could and did do nothing more than sit by bedsides, holding hands and pouring hopes into the ears of their patients.

They boiled linen, brewed tea from willow bark, stripped beds, changed sheets, soaked and re-soaked washcloths, and supervised by Gilbert distilled solutions of sulphur to clear the girls' lungs, the smell of which lingered in their skin and hair long after it had been inhaled. Whatever he told them to do, Nan and Mara did, and when in the evenings they retreated to the tower room it was with exhaustion that echoed through every bone of their bodies.

'Do you know what I can't grasp,' said Nan as she stepped behind the silk partition screen and into the tin bath, 'is that Faith _wanted_ to do this. All day, every day until the war ends. Whereas we've been doing this for weeks and I feel like a limp dishrag.'

'I know,' said Mara, 'it's deep in Faith's bones. Like your economies.'

'Much more useful though,' said Nan, wringing water from her hair.

'Oh I don't know,' said Mara. 'I could certainly use one of your economies about now. You're not wrong about nursing being tiring.'

'Oh well, in that case…' Nan scrabbled along the lip of the bath for the bar of soap. Slippery as an eel it shot off the rim and under the screen. Mara caught it where it stopped just short of her perch on the bed. Nan put out a hand for it but the soap wasn't forthcoming. Rather, Mara ducked behind the screen and gathering Nan's hair in her hands said, 'Let me do that.'

'You're as tired as I am. You've just said so.'

'Mm, but if I can see you then I know you're alive, Catkin.'

If there was a good, concrete defense against this line of attack, Nan was too worn out to think of it. Instead she relaxed into the hot water and luxury of being looked after by someone else. After a minute Mara said, 'Mouse used to like me to do this. She's always had such thick hair. You too.'

'Whereas yours is all fine-spun gold. About that economy I was going to tell you.'

'Never mind if you can't conjure one,' said Mara. 'I know if it were me I wouldn't have the energy for anything half so creative.'

'Bone deep,' Nan said, 'remember?' Then, with a smile, 'The thing I wish most in the world is for them both to be well. And when they are…'

The water plashed and rippled, and long after Nan had dried her hair and made a burrow of the old Steps to the Altar quilt, Nan continued to whisper of the adventures they would have, the memories they would build when Poppy and Di came back to them.

* * *

 _The other evening we built castles-in-the-air, but I couldn't for the life of me tell you what they were now, mums. When I went in to Di this morning she looked at me with eyes like glassy grey marbles and said 'Walter's coming up the walk.'_

 _I was trying to coax her into taking a bit of thin broth for breakfast and hearing that I dropped the spoon. It slid across the room and lodged under my bed._

 _'_ _He can't be, darling,' I said to the depths of the bed as I extracted the spoon. I thought, what if she gets better but doesn't remember? How will I ever look her in the eye and tell her he's dead? I couldn't do it then, when the words were fighting their way out of her throat and the fever hot on her. Realising, I swapped the spoon for a sponge, though by now I've pretty well decided that all the cool water in the world won't make an ounce of difference to delirium. But don't worry, mums, I'm not a doctor. Dad is, and he has a different opinion I'm sure._

 _'_ _He is,' said Di stubbornly. 'He's coming up the walk.'_

 _It was all I could do to ease Di back onto the pillow mound she had amassed over the weeks. And mums, I think I gave up then. At any rate I ran out of patience, gentleness and endurance all at once and tapped into the well of exasperation._

 _'_ _You aren't_ _allowed_ _to die,' I said. 'Do you understand? Jem is missing and Walter is dead and you cannot die because I can't –we can't –stand to lose any more of our family. Is that clear? You're going to get well again or so help me, I will never forgive you.'_

 _I wanted to cry. I'm sure I sounded on the edge of tears. Anyway, for better or worse dad caught the tail end of that conversation and sat down beside me. I thought –I expected –he'd be cross, but he pulled me into his arms and kissed my head, and said, 'I start to see how you all rub along so well. You and Mara are a right pair. I've already had to explain to her that no one is going to die.'_

 _He took out his stethoscope and began to move it experimentally across Di's chest. 'What was it Walter used to call you girls,' he asked as he listened, 'the girls who pinned hopes?'_

 _'_ _You don't understand,' I said, 'we've run out of things to pin them to.'_

 _Just then I meant it mums. Oh you have no idea how much. Poppy was ill, Jem was missing, Walter was dead and I was watching my sister die and I couldn't do anything about it._

 _'_ _Here's something for you,' said dad, tapping the stethescope's chestpiece. 'The mucous rale is retreating. It's only covering half her lungs now.'_

 _I'm no nurse mums, and I'm only half sure what a mucous rale is, but I've been acting the nurse long enough to be groggily aware that this is a good thing. A different day I might even have lightened at the news. At the time though, all I could think about was Di insisting that Walter was walking up to the house to meet her. I said so to dad._

 _'_ _You didn't hear her,' I said. 'She was so certain.'_

 _'_ _No,' said dad, his eyes crinkling at the corners. I thought for a moment he was going to laugh. 'But there_ _is_ _someone out in the garden. Go look, why don't you?_

 _I did, craning my neck across the bedand sure enough there was someone approaching the house from the back. Not Walter, though, of course not. Whoever it was had hair like a blazing sun and for a dizzying moment I thought it was Jem come to surprise us. Someone had told him about Di being ill, about Poppy, about the chaos we've bee living in for weeks, and thought to cheer us up…And then reality was back with a vengeance and Jem was stranded in some unknown and nameless prisoner of war camp, and Mara's feet were all but flying across the wood of the floor. I don't think I've ever known Mara to run. It was her exclamation that brought me most solidly back to earth, a string of Gaelic so rapid that even after years of hearing it dropped into conversation I couldn't distinguish individual words._

 _Neither could dad, whatever his boasts on his previous visit. 'You know,' he said to me as he resettled the stethoscope around his neck, 'I haven't the least idea what any of that meant, but I get the sense that the word for 'idiot' sounds the same whatever the language.'_

 _That made everything fall into place for me and I laughed. 'Certainly brothers the world over are all held in much the same sort of value,' I said. I gave him a kiss and then went to meet the others downstairs, armed with the nugget of good news he had gifted to me._

* * *

'I've just been having it explained to me that I mustn't come in,' said Alastair when Nan caught Mara up at the door.

'No,' said Mara. 'I've had my share of family members taking ill, thanks very much.'

'But none of us has so much as sneezed,' said Alastair, indignant. Poppy's eyes would have been wide and owlish over such everyday misunderstanding. Mara rolled hers to devastating effect. Watching them together Nan wanted to laugh. Instead she said, 'It's getting better though, dad says so.'

'Is it?' in a heartbeat they had shifted from divided to united front.

'So I've just been told. I'll tell you about it as we walk. Come on.I start to think there's something in all dad's wittering about fresh air.' So saying, Nan slipped Mara's arm through hers, propelled Alastair forward and they set off, stopping only to collect Peter from under the sycamores.

The daffodils were out in St. John's graveyard, and the willows in leafy splendour; they saw all this as they passed. No one had any appetite for the graveyard walk, whatever its springtime treasures. Instead they walked down to the water, where the punts were out racing in anticipating of the end-of-term boat race. Graceful as water snakes they sported array of flags from bow to bow. The wind snicked at their banners and ribbons in variations of red, green, yellow and blue unfurled and flashed to life. It was such a normal, May-time sight that the little troupe from Swallowgate couldn't help taking heart from it. They sat down on the grass to watch, shielding their eyes against the sun and allowing the wind to unknot some of the care they had been carrying close of late.

'Balm in Gilead after all,' said Mara. 'I'm glad you thought of it, Catkin. We needed it.' From all quarters came fuzzy murmurs of assent.

'Where go the boats,' said Alastair absently.

'You'll have to find out when you're up next term,' said Mara.

Alastair laughed and pulling the plait of her hair said, 'Silly, it's a poem. _Dark brown is the river/ Golden flows the sand…_ '

'Oh, I see.' Mara laughed. They all did. It was good to laugh there by the river, the sun spackling it with little diamonds of light and the boats nosing serenely along the surface.

'There's a whole fistful of them,' said Alastair. 'The weans have been learning to read from them.'

'Well I'll have missed them then, won't I?' said Mara. 'I've not been home since before Christmas, and then it was much to chaotic to ask about reading.'

'And yet I turn up and you tell me I can't come in because you've had enough of family getting ill.'

'It isn't all blood, _ghille rauidh_ ,' said Mara, the laughter of moments before drifting away up the river with the last of the boats.

'No?'

'No,' said the others. 'You take your degree and tell me I'm wrong at the end of it,' said Mara. 'Not before then.'

They walked back leisurely, stopping by the Martello tower to watch the sun go down. When they returned it was to Gilbert leaning casually against the doorframe, haloed by the last of the light. At the sight of them approaching he broke into a grin.

'I've been watching for you,' he said needlessly. He all but pulling Nan and Mara into his arms. Then with all the pride of a child who has passed from first to third reader in a single leap, 'Come in. There are people to see you.'


	30. Chapter 30

_I promised you something approaching regularity, and for a novelty I appear to be managing that. Having my possessions back is obviously conducive to writing. As ever, thank you to all of you for reading and reviewing. Your time and patience are always appreciated._

* * *

After the first unbelieving exclamations, and the rush of relieved tears there came a flurry of questions; 'Are you sure? Really? Do you mean it?' in hundredfold variations. Gilbert met them all with patience, but even so was grateful when at last the onslaught admitted of enough of a pause to say 'Go look if you won't believe me.'

The girls went almost before he had finished, pulling free of his arms, tearing through the house and up the stairs with no regard for end tables or ornamental shepherdesses. To the others who might have followed Gilbert said mildly, 'Later. I'm afraid we'll all be something of an afterthought at the moment. They'll have things to say to one another you know, and we'd only get in the way.'

* * *

Poppy was sitting up, blanket tucked into starched neat corners around her middle when Mara came into the room.

'I'm told I frightened you,' she said. 'I didn't think it could be done, Ariel.'

'If it's all the same to you, I'd rather you not repeat the experiment,' said Mara. Poppy tried to laugh but ended in a hacking cough with a rasp like a reed.

'I meant that,' said Mara, handing Poppy a glass of water. Poppy took it and sipped at it slowly. 'If you change your mind and die after all I shall personally haunt you.'

'Right,' said Poppy, swallowing the last of the water, 'now that that's cleared up, how much have I missed?'

'Oh you know,' said Mara, striving for levity, 'not much. A lot of hand wringing and kettle boiling, sleep deprivation…well you know, you pulled me through it. You might have seen to it though that you didn't catch it yourself.'

Poppy smiled. 'Turn about is always fair,' she said. 'Go on telling me what happened while I was out of the world. I'm hungry for news. I think… I have a memory you talked a lot to me during the fever, but I don't remember about what. I'm not even sure it happened. Remind me?'

'I'd much rather listen to you, Mouse.'

'Talk about what? I've been in and out of consciousness for a small eternity now, remember?'

'I'm not about to forget in a hurry,' said Mara, relenting. For the next hour she sat on the edge of Poppy's bed recounting the state of Swallowgate as it had been over the weeks of Poppy's illness. How in the beginning she and Nan had divided the work, one of them nursing while the other scoured the library for medical resources that might help. There were none of course, the useful books all being by that point in the term greedily hoarded by overwrought medical students. Even if they hadn't been they had no meaningful place to start their research; no one seemed to know what it was that was sweeping through the student population faster than it took vector beetles to fell a pine tree. She told how the library failing them they had fallen back on household remedies, the kind found in household encyclopaedias or handed down mother-to-daughter. 'The longest way round is the shortest way home and all that,' said Mara with a smile. And then there were the letters they had written and the anxious hours they had sat up watching for signs of recovery, listening for sounds of arrival, nerves keyed and taut as sails.

'The relief when Dr. Blythe arrived…you've no idea.'

'Of not having to hold a life in your hands? Bet I can guess,' said Poppy, voice crackling. Mara poured her more water. She took it, swallowed and said, 'Whatever made Faith choose it, do you think?'

'I expect, unlike us, Faith can be sure she's preserving lives, not staving off death. There's a difference. There were moments I didn't know which I was being asked to do. I expect Nan had them too.'

'Well you did something right,' said Poppy. 'I'm still here.' Her eyes went suddenly wide and owlish and it was so long since Mara had seen her like that that she thought she might have given in an cried had Poppy not then said, 'I can still count your ribs, Ariel. It made sense when you came up from the fever, but have you actually eaten since?'

'Oh yes.'

'Really? What? When? A boiled egg at two in the morning?'

'Well they're an efficient thing to make!'

Poppy's eyes crinkled and she began to laugh and then to cough. She took more of the water, choked on it, and suffered Mara to rap a hand against her back until the spasm had passed. 'I'm not actually wrong, am I?'

'Go carefully, Mouse or I'll chalk it up to a working knowledge of tending the sick.'

Unwilling to risk laughing again Poppy dived into her pillows, her shoulders twitching with suppressed mirth. When she surfaced she leaned across the bedspread and pulled Mara clumsily into a hug.

'Do you know,' said Poppy, 'more than the promise of real food or outdoors, or any of Dr. Blythe's pronouncements, it's hearing you tease me that convinces me I'm mending.'

Unwilling to relinquish the hug, Mara's laughter was smothered by the bones of Poppy's shoulder. 'I wish you'd said Mouse. I'd have started _weeks_ ago had I known.'

* * *

Di had in the interval between Gilbert's vigil in the garden and the girls' return, fallen back asleep. It was real sleep though, Nan knew it at once for the stillness of her sister and the evenness of her breath. Fevered she had turned windmills in her sleep, Nan's attempts at preserving hospital corners a lost cause. Now she was still and the blankets a massy quilted sea on a clear day. That was enough and for a long time she sat by the bed drinking in the picture of Di asleep, the sereneness of her, the gentle huff of her breath, heavier and thicker than normal with the residual mucous rale, but even, relaxed.

It was contagious. Breathing with her, Nan was halfway to sleep herself when Di's voice, thick with sleep and crackling from underuse pulled her back.

'Apple blossom,' said Di drowsily. 'I thought it must be you. You were here, weren't you, all through the fever?'

'Dad might have taken over on occasion,' said Nan.

'But when you were…you were wearing scent? I think I'd know you anywhere for it.'

'I thought it might keep you here,' said Nan, helpless. 'Sort of an anchor. I'm not much for nursing. I couldn't think what else to do.'

'It worked though, didn't it?' said Di. She extracted an arm from the nest of the quilt and reached for Nan's hand and lacing their fingers together gave it a tentative squeeze.

'I'm here now. How long did it last?'

'I lost count,' said Nan. 'The days blurred together.' Even as she spoke she looked to the wall calendar, half expecting to see it neatly marked with Di's red Xs. But of course it was blank. The last of the Xs trailed off somewhere around the middle of the month, but had that been because Mara had become ill, or was that when Di had first taken sick herself? It was hard now to remember. She began to count backwards on her fingers, so many days since Alastair's arrival, since Peter's, since their father's, since she had written to ask her father to help…'About three weeks,' said Nan carefully, 'give or take. Poppy's the one that can do numbers of course…but the calendar's wrong. We're into June now.'

'Almost a month,' said Di. 'It's as well we'll have the whole summer to make it up. I shall miss you when you come back next year.'

'But I'm not coming back.'

'Of course you are.' Di propelled herself upward from among the pillows. Moving too quickly she wavered dizzily for a moment before successfully manoeuvring her arm upright finally succeeded at pillowing her chin on one hand.

'Of course you're coming back,' she said, dizziness ebbing. 'You 've got the funding and everything.'

'You know I haven't got to take it,' said Nan.

'Have to? Of course you don't have to. But I've seen you watching the post, waiting for those large embossed letters. You've _wanted_ it for months, and now you're not going.'

'There are dearer things than another year at Redmond,' said Nan. Gently she eased Di back onto her pillows. Even from the depths of the feather down she could see Di beginning to argue and held up a hand to stop her.

'No, listen. This thing, influenza or pneumonia or whatever it is, is going around like wildfire. I was lucky with you…we were in the same place at the same time. But if it's mums, or Rilla…or maybe Jem will come back…the point is, I don't want the journey to have to be a train, a boat and another train and at the mercy of the weather besides. What if it's winter and the boat won't cross, and then I arrive to a declassified milk train crawling up the coast slower than molasses in January? And then it's anywhere from six to twenty-four hours later than I was supposed to arrive and I've missed important things…goodbyes maybe.'

'And maybe,' said Di, 'the world will end, the sun will run cold and the stars grow old and we'll all vanish in the twinkling of an eye. But you can't give up on a dream for what might happen. The MLitt is too important to you for that. I watched you wishing for it.'

'You won't remember,' said Nan, 'but I wished for this harder. For you, for this. It matters so much more. Besides, it wouldn't be the same, being at Swallowgate without the rest of you. I'd much rather hand the lease over to Jo and little Naomi Blake…'

'She'd hate to know you still call her that.'

'Can I help it if she's eternally stuck at six and tormenting Spider?'

'Yes,' said Di, eyes sparkling with good humour. 'You can alter the mental construction of her.' Then she smiled, shook her head and said reminiscently, 'She was only eleven then but didn't Spider fancy herself grown up that summer? And now, of course, she is. It makes me feel horribly old to realise it.'

'You and me both,' said Nan.

'Which,' said Di as if she had never been interrupted, 'is the other reason you can't give the MLitt up. You mightn't get the chance again.'

'Almost certainly I won't,' said Nan. 'But I'll be where I want –where I need –to be. No one's going to hold you accountable for it, darling. This is me, deciding my future.'

'At least tell me what you'll do instead.'

'Another time, said Nan. 'Dad won't forgive me if I wear you out with talking the first half hour we get. It's good to have you back.'

'Better still to be back,' Di said.

* * *

The first week of June was drawing to a close when Poppy was finally allowed out of bed. The spring had waxed lush and verdant since her confinement and the garden was thick with irises, daffodils and elfwort. On the windowsill the parsley and mint ran riot, spilling over their boxes trailing along the ground like ivy. These Pilgrim was industriously stalking even as Mara attempted to civilise them. Nan was sitting a little ways away, lap obscured by a voluminous stretch of cloth that Poppy took to be the Red Cross project of the moment. On impulse she left the door to swing shut and ran down the gravel to meet them. After so long in bed she was unsteady, but it didn't matter; Nan's arm had shot out like an arrow to catch her even before she fell down at their feet.

'It's good to see you again,' said Nan as she tugged Poppy upright. 'Doesn't she look better for being allowed out of the house?' This to Mara, who had abandoned her efforts with the window boxes to join them in the admittedly partial shade of the lattice fence.

'Much,' agreed Mara. 'Mind how you sit, Mouse, the brambles are in full glory. They'll snag your neck if you're not careful.'

Poppy laughed and resettled herself a safe distance from the invasive brambles. She took Nan's sewing in hand, squinted at it, asked 'Enteric shirt?' and on getting an affirmative began to realign the seams. Nan let her do it without a murmur and for a little longer they cosseted her. It wasn't until she'd redone half the seams of the enteric shirt that Mara said, 'We ought really to be generous with you. There are others anxious to see you.'

'Are there?' said Poppy, eyes widening in surprise.

'Don't tell me you've forgotten even that part of being ill. I did tell you at the time. Peter. Over that way.' Mara nodded towards the back of the garden where sure enough Peter and Alastair were just discernable among the foliage pruning the crowns of the sycamores.

'Nan and I thought we might as well make them useful as they evidently weren't going anywhere. Don't tell me you haven't noticed the lawn's the neatest it's ever been?'

In fact Poppy hadn't. Before she could say so the others were deserting her.

'I promised to bring out tea ages ago,' said Mara. 'Do explain it's equal parts your fault for distracting me and That Cat's for getting in the way of my work, won't you?'

'I'll help,' said Nan, stooping to reclaim her sewing and making a haphazard knot of it, the easier to carry it indoors.

'You really don't have –' began Poppy, helpless.

'Yes, we really have,' said Nan dropping a hasty kiss on the top of Poppy's head. 'We've been guarding you jealously for weeks. It's probably the height of incivility. As we'll presently be forgiven I don't suppose it matters much. And I shouldn't worry, whatever she says, Mara's fond of you and Pilgrim both, really.'

'I had a sort of idea,' said Poppy dryly, ' _the lady doth protest too much methinks_ and all that. Tell her I object strenuously to being abandoned if and when she lets you into the kitchen, do you promise?'

'Remind me,' said Nan, 'what was that bit of Shakespeare you were just quoting at me?'

Poppy broke off a strand of the unruly mint and flung it at Nan, but already she was retreating. It fell ineffectually to the ground and drifted noiselessly across the ground, arousing only Pilgrim's curiosity. He ran after it in a frenzy, leaving Nan's laughter to float back across the garden on the wing of the breeze.

* * *

In the kitchen Mara braced her elbows against the windowsill and waited on the kettle to boil. It was humming comfortably when Nan elbowed her along the sill, content to join in her survey of the garden, where Poppy could be seen even then running the length of the lawn to the sycamores, her hair a ribbon of sleek dark rope in the sunlight. It was impossible to make out what was said, it hardly seemed necessary. Peter caught her up in his arms gladly and the world grew very close.

'This will be what Faith means, will it, when she writes about living vicariously through Mouse?'

'You tell me,' said Mara, turning away from the window to Nan. 'It's as applicable a description of you as it is Faith or me. Mind you,' turning back to the window, 'I rather doubt Mouse hasn't had her share of windowsill vigils in the name of humouring curiosity. In fact I'm sure of it.' Her voice was warm with amusement and it was infectious. Nan laughed wholeheartedly, and shook her head in wordless entertainment.

'How do you work that out?' she said when her breath had come back to her.

'Well,' said Mara as if it were obvious, 'Safeguarding her –it's only what she'd do for me.'

'That's what we're calling it, is it?'

'Maybe some intelligence gathering too,' conceded Mara. 'But for the most part, yes.'

'I see. Should you have had a word with Alastair do you think?'

'What, and generally re-enacted the last act of an Austen novel? Mouse really wouldn't have forgiven me then. Besides, Alastair's a knack for vanishing, you watch.'

'Family trick, is it?' said Nan.

'No,' said Mara. 'That is, I still don't think I do anything of the sort.'

Even as they were speaking Alastair could be seen disappearing up the branches of one of the sycamores and thence over the fence. On the stove the kettle hissed and spluttered to vigorous life. Poppy began to say something –what was impossible to judge –and Peter stopped her with a kiss. Mara tugged Nan away from the window.

'Help me with the tea, will you?'

'I thought we were intelligence gathering?'

'Yes, but not actually spying. There's a difference.'

'I'll take your word for it,' said Nan. Then impishly as she began to bundle the cherry blossom china onto a tea tray, 'Shall I also take it you have your own store of memories sufficient to leave Mouse to hers on that score?'

'Whatever gives you that idea?'

'The colour of you to start with,' said Nan. She ducked the corner of the tea towel Mara made to swat her with laughingly. 'Mostly though,' said Nan, 'I know you. The great thing would be if you hadn't.'

'Can't I know when to leave well enough alone?' asked Mara but the laughter was back in her voice, threatening to escape.

'Of course,' said Nan as she finished with the china. 'Though you realise that making good on that promise of tea means intruding, do you?'

'In another life,' said Mara, 'I think they called that chaperoning.'

'If I were asked to choose I should have said Mouse was the last person who needed it. And since when do you of all people cleave to propriety?'

'I don't really,' Mara conceded. 'I've just got in the habit of checking to make sure she's where I left her. This will sound absurd but I'm not quite ready to trust the outside world with her.'

'On the contrary,' said Nan, 'it makes perfect sense.'

* * *

They found Peter and Poppy still under the sycamores, hands enfolded, her head pressed against the hollow of his chest. Poppy wore a look like a starburst on her face and it blossomed into a sun when she saw them. She disentangled herself from Peter's arms and went to help Nan smooth an argyle blanket over the lawn to protect them against the evening dew. Mara set the tea tray down and they all drew around it, the blanket billowing and puckering as it shifted to accommodate their weight. Alastair repapered, drawn seemingly by the clatter of the tea tray, and even Gilbert came out with Di in his arms to join them. She had heard the rustling of the blanket and their chatter over the swallows from the window and petitioned to be allowed to go out to them, and Gilbert, who had never been good at resisting her, had capitulated. Safely delivered into the fresh air she snuggled against Nan's side, making a cushion of her shoulder drunk in the heady smell of greenery that was the fresh-pruned parsley and mint, the cropped grass and trimmed sycamores. A ladybird began to weave its way gingerly across a diamond argyle island and as she brushed it away she asked of the assembled company 'Whose turn is it to do supper this evening?'

'Mine,' said Gilbert decisively. 'You are taken up with celebrating and Susan hasn't let me near a kitchen in years. I was once rather good at frying trout though; I want to see if I still am. Humour me?'

They promised they would. The air was gauzy and the tea smooth and richly spiced with cloves and cardamom. It enfolded them like an eiderdown and was almost too warm for the mildness of the day. They sipped at it leisurely, content to make it last, more content still to sit and drink in each other's company. The shadows grew long and the china knocked lightly piece against piece; they hardly noticed. Much less did they notice Gilbert's tactical retreat to the kitchen until long after he had gone. They were catching one another up on the pieces of the lives they had missed and grafting their histories back together. No one talked of war news; there were enough spectres looming over them without invoking the state of world affairs. They were beginning to creep dangerously near when Di said, 'I _will_ get the kitchen back from you before we leave, won't I?'

'Oh I expect we'll find occasion to wrangle over it at least once more for old time's sake,' said Mara.

'My theory,' said Poppy, 'is that you won't have any trouble laying claim to it. As far as I can tell she and Nan had all but forgotten its existence until just lately.'

That made Di laugh, and laughter being the easier response Nan and Mara joined in, and the others followed gratefully. It was a relief to give in to something so restorative as laughter, better to share it with the restored circle of Swallowgate girls. Their laughter ran the gamut from sparkling to fractured but it mattered not at all; the great thing was that they were together again in the lengthening shadows planning everything from Red Cross projects to graduation plans. Days ago such a reality had hardly felt possible. Now it was upon them and it was golden.


	31. Chapter 31

_Thanks always for reading and reviewing._

* * *

 _This is to inform you_ …the letter began. It arrived with the morning post, a large, embossed thing made of heavy cream paper, the like of which had all but vanished over the course of the war. They would never have placed it, the gilded script and the embossed address, had it not been for the university's ongoing correspondence with Nan since her application for her Master of Letters back in the autumn term. They were sitting down to breakfast of tea and Poppy's homemade bannocks, the air still redolent of fresh bread, flour and the rich savour of India tea, when it arrived, thunking ominously as it made contact with the hall mat. The unexpected noise of it startled them, and Mara, absorbed in her copy of _As You Like It_ let go her hold on the verso in her surprise causing the book to fall heavily shut. Poppy dropped the butter knife with a clatter, and Nan reeled backwards from the table teacup in hand, dappling her skirt with amber drops of tea in the process. Di, apparently alone in her unfazed state, got up from the scrubbed pine table and ventured into the hall, where were amassed on the mat any number of letters running the gamut from inconsequential advertisements for the milk float and offers of tutorship in the coming term to the most recent batch of Ingleside letters, and of course the massy, embossed affair with the entwined maple leaf and lady's slipper crest in place of a return address.

Di brought the lot back to the table, where in her absence the others had rediscovered their composure and were once more calmly buttering toast and pouring excess tea from saucer back to teacup as the case warranted.

'This will be for you,' said Di, not bothering to glance at the address and handing Nan the outsized letter as she divided the post between them.

'N-o,' said Nan slowly, 'it's to all of us. See the address?'

She held it out and Di joined with the others in an attempt to read upside down. _College Red Cross, Swallowgate Chapter, 9 Ivell Street,_ and so it ran on, leaving no room for doubt.

'Well,' said Di, 'open it, do. I wouldn't vouch for the others but I've had enough of waiting to last a lifetime.'

A shudder of agreement passed over the table. Accordingly Nan cleaned the butter knife on her napkin and slit the seal of the envelope with it.

 _This is to inform you that on consideration and in light of your exemplary dedication to the College Red Cross Society…_ She stopped abruptly and finding upside down reading availed them nothing the others descended on her, the better to read over her shoulder.

' _How_ much?' said Poppy, who from her perch on the arm of Nan's chair had much the best view of the letter. Her eyes were wider than ever.

'Here, let me look,' said Mara and ably extracted the letter from between Nan's fingers. She began to skim it and the breath she had taken to read escaped her in an exhalation of incredulity.

'But that's a fortune –what do they expect us to do with so much?'

Somehow Di, who had flocked to her side like a sparrow for ease of reading, got the weighty paper in hand, began to read and then handed it back to Nan, unbelieving.

'We couldn't use that up if we tried,' she said.

'No,' said Nan, who was still staring unseeing at the letter before her. 'No, we couldn't. But…'

'You've an idea, Catkin,' said Mara, twisting a coil of Nan's hair between her fingers.

'Have you?' said Di and Poppy at once. Nan worried her fingers together, causing the letter, rich, starched and creamy to crackle in protest.

'More of a thought,' said Nan. 'Something you said back when the others were sick, Mara, about Faith being a nurse to her fingertips. I thought…if the rest of you were for it…'

'But of course she must have it!'

'Catkin, you're a marvel, why did none of the rest of us see it?'

'The perfect solution.'

Nan waved away their approval with the rustle of the letter. 'The College Red Cross was always Faith's pet project while she was here,' she said with a shrug. 'It just made sense. You're really sure it's all right?'

There followed further exclamations of affirmation and a flurry of hugs that threatened to overwhelm Nan until she resorted to beating them off with the letter. 'Can't…breathe…'she managed between affectionate onslaughts and giddy with excitement, they collapsed in a heap, laughing.

'How shall we tell her?' said Di when they had recovered. It had been too long since any of them had had a surprise so amenable to orchestrate and they were out of practice. Various plans were put forward and rejected. In the first instance they thought of writing, and Nan was tasked with drafting something suitable. But when she had tried and dismissed a fistful of sample letters, the idea was given up as an imperfect one.

The trouble is,' said Nan, 'that she's never going to agree in a heartbeat. And nothing I can write, or you can dictate is going to persuade her.'

There was no contesting this. That was why late in the afternoon, after prudent assessment of their personal allowances, they abandoned the scrubbed pine table with its confusion of paper and set out for Patterson Street to petition for use of the telephone.

Ruthie met them at the door, brimful with well-wishes and questions. They staved these off as well as they could and at last managed by talking alternately in burst of confused unison and coherence to make their petition, and once it was across they were all but swept into the genteel chaos of Patterson Street with exhortations to help themselves to the phone.

Accordingly the girls picked their way through the manse's old-world and imposing furniture to the telephone nook. With some difficulty Di negotiated the number for the exchange and the line clicked and whirred as it made the requisite connections.

'It _is_ one of her days off,' said Poppy, suddenly unsure.

'Yes I think so. It should be if the pattern of her letters is right,' said Di. Even as she said it, it occurred to her that if her father was right about the influenza having got everywhere at once Faith's usual three days on, three off pattern would likely be in grievous disorder, but judged it better not to say so. And as it happened they were in luck. After what seemed an interminable interval of white noise, Faith's voice came faltering across the line.

'Who is it?' She sounded exhausted. It was that or the line was terrible; both options seemed equally likely.

'The girls who pin hopes,' said Di, who had the mouthpiece. 'We wanted to tell you…'

In their excitement they all began to talk at once, stopping only when Faith broke through the confusion to beg them to slow down.

'I thought I wouldn't _hear_ you again until I came home,' she said, her voice uncharacteristically fragile. 'But now I can and you're here –or near enough – and I want to savour it; I especially want to understand what you're yattering about. Humour me?'

'We'd better let Nan tell you then,' said Poppy, who had got control of the mouthpiece by then. 'She's much the best of us with words.'

Nan duly took over the telephone and began a recapitulation of the contents of the letter.

'Go back a bit,' said Faith, 'this came from the university?'

'That's right. The financial people.'

'And it's for _how_ much?'

Nan reiterated the sum dazedly. Not eight hours after receipt of the missive the knowledge of it's contents refused stubbornly to sink into her brain. 'Rather like something out of a fairytale, isn't it?' she said.

'To put it mildly. Or possibly one of your economies, Catkin.'

'No,' said Nan, 'I would never have imagined…'

Faith didn't let her finish. Apparently being an ocean away from momentous correspondence made its absorption easier, because already she had moved on to practicalities. Or perhaps that was only the nurse in her surfacing.

'Nan ought to have some of it surely, to live off of next year,' she said now.

'I'll be teaching at Avonlea, I won't need it,' said Nan.

The phone crackled ominously, but even garbled Faith's incredulity was apparent. 'You'll be doing what?' emerged scratchily over the distortion of the line.

'Don't,' said Di. 'You'll only waste valuable minutes. I've already argued myself blue. And as she's got Mara in her corner…'

'It's a lost cause?' said Faith over the telephone. 'Of course it's a bloody lost cause. Catkin's the only person in the world who can out-argue Jerry. Why you even bothered…But look, what on _earth_ am I supposed to do with all of that?'

'We thought,' said Mara, deftly plucking the mouthpiece from between Nan's fingers, 'it could go towards your becoming a nurse. Formally, I mean. After the war.'

'But I never mentioned…'said Faith helplessly.

'You hardly had to,' said Mara dryly. 'Your letters are that full of it I'm afraid we took it for granted you'd come home and make a study of it properly.'

Faith's laughter, golden as a sunbeam was fractured by a screech of static as the temperamental line failed to process the sound of it.

'Trust you to guess,' she said, occasioning the imperfect phone some relief. 'Now, I want to hear about Avonlea. You'd really rather be there, Catkin?'

'Yes,' said with immoveable decision. 'I've always loved it, you know that. My home-from-home, mums used to call it in the days before Swallowgate. I think it still could be, the cherries and the satin-sheeny lakes, the cedars and the pockets of lady's slipper…I think I could even like laying down roots there for a spell.'

'Well _I_ won't fight you,' said Faith, 'so long as you're happy. God knows you sound it.'

'I shouldn't worry on that score,' said Mara, taking back the receiver, 'she's been hymning its virtues ever since resolving to go.'

'Naturally,' said Faith. 'No one can wax lyrical quite like our Catkin.' Then she sobered and said, 'Speaking of which, Ariel, as you've got control of the phone…that endearment of yours and Mouse's for a friend–how does one say it?'

' _A charaid_ ,' said Mara and Poppy at once, the apellation coming out almost a question in their bemusement.

'That's all right then,' said Faith gratefully, 'I did say it right.'

'Parrot,' said Mara with affection, 'of course you got it right. Whatever makes you ask?'

'No matter,' Faith said. 'Look, I'd better go. Otherwise you'll be dipping into that sum to pay for the call.'

Laughter spackled round the Patterson Street telephone nook and the girls shook their heads, forgetting or else not caring the gesture would be lost on Faith. The line began to wheeze with static and they were making their goodbyes when struck with a thought, Mara said, 'Before you go, Parrot, what in the name of God is heliotrope cyanosis? You never said.'

Faith's answer when it came was distorted by a crackling that might be her voice, or might have been a fault in the line. Nothing though could disguise the fervour of her exclamatory 'Oh thank God. Thank _God_ you never found out. I was so afraid you might, Ariel.'

'But what –'

'Believe me,' said Faith, 'you'd have known it if you'd seen it. Even without a textbook description.'

'That,' Mara said dryly, 'is singularly unhelpful.' All to no avail though; the line crackled once more with static, shattering the last of Faith's thanks and well wishes and then went dead.

Afterwards they allowed themselves to be petted by Phil in compensation, she said as she waved away their pennies and poured out tea, for the cost of the call.

'Though I have a bone to pick with you,' she said to Nan, 'for abandoning our book club for two.'

'But Aunt Phil, we never had such a thing!' Nan helplessly said.

'Of course we did honey, it was to start in September. Didn't I tell you?'

'Apparently not,' said Nan, already succumbing to a spasm of laughter. It was infectious, and not helped at all by Phil's protestation, 'you're really much too much like Queen Anne. Does anyone tell you?'

'Now that,' said Nan, as she recovered, 'you _have_ said before. Often.'

Ruthie joined them then, curiosity peaked by the sound of their chatter competing with the Byrne china, her sister on her heels. She was a wide-eyed girl, sleek, dark and obviously more Blake than Gordon, and anxious to know if all Ruthie's talk of the English department was to be taken seriously.

'We'd have to hear it to answer that,' said Di. Accordingly Naomi Blake sat down cross-legged at their feet and in-between nibbling a piece of shortbread recounted her sister's tales of the English department. These occasioned further laughter, and to combat them Nan and Di dredged up their own memories of the School of English, which lecturers to avoid, which to befriend, which ones welcomed academic curiosity and which ones only wanted a regurgitation of their pet theory in 2,00 words or less. They lightly glossed the frustrations of Chaucer, the density of Wollstonecraft, verbosity of Thackeray and the interminability of _Endymion_ , highlighting instead the richness of Donne, the discovery of Frost, the nuances of Coleridge, the pleasure of grappling with Austen's finely balanced prose.

'They're good people' they stressed as the little party dissolved in gratitude, 'the school is warm, the environment friendly. You'll like it. We did.'

When they arrived home the letter was still where they had left it on the scrubbed pine table _This is to inform you_ …Nan picked it up with ceremony and carefully stowed it under Augie, the little blue dachshund that safeguarded the left of the mantel. _…That on consideration and in light of your exemplary dedication to the College Red Cross…_ Poppy tidied away the remaining epistolatory clutter and workspace free they began to prepare dinner, their chatter peppered as it hadn't been in years, with their plans for _someday_ and _soon_. They found they could do it now that at least one of their futures was solidly secured.

Much later they sat out under the sycamores listening to the thrum of crickets and the snap of the fire. The air was full of smoke and flying embers, the mint and parsley from the windowsill and the roses at the door. Overhead a star shot gracefully towards earth, and Poppy seeing it, arced a hand upwards and said fervently to the others, 'Make a wish!'

They did, gladly, eagerly, in hopeful expectation that whatever else, there would indeed come days where they sat and dreamed and cherished wishes as easily as they did then.


	32. Chapter 32

_I was going to keep this chapter back until the weekend, but apparently having the house to myself is conducive to writing, so here it is early. There's lots of it, but then, there's only an epilogue to follow, so I suppose I wanted to make this last chapter count. Thank you as ever for reading and/or reviewing. If this chapter is as agreeable to read as I found it to write, I will consider it a job well done._

* * *

When at last _As You Like It_ arrived on the stage of the Redmond Convocation hall, the girls who pinned hopes wasted no time in flocking to see it. Mara had long ago given up dissuading them in the fuss they made of these performances, and on this last occasion to go all together and see her acting they did not fall short of expectation. In anticipation of graduation they practiced hairstyles and agonised over jewellery fittings, anything to make this last indulgent ramble through Arden wood last forever.

It was, Nan said afterwards, like watching a fairytale come alive before them, but then really, they ought ot have expected nothing less of Mara's Rosalind. She was more than striking, and though they lost no occasion to tell her so, none of them could find the words to articulate the vivacity of the performance. Nan perhaps came nearest when she said over an elfwort fire in the aftermath of an early production, 'I begin to think really good theatre is _alive_.'

'Of course it is,' said Mara, 'all I do isinhabit the world of the story for a spell.' She threw a cluster of sweet wiliam onto the fire. The spiced clove scent of it mingled sharply with the peppermint smell of the elfwort not unpleasantly, the scent of it gentle on the drifting smoke.

* * *

As promised, Jo came down in time to catch the last of the run, brimful of that inherent cheerfulness that marked her Poppy's sister. It wasn't a lavish production –the war had gone on too long for such a thing to be possible –but that didn't stop her coming away from the evening bursting with worshipful enthusiasm for a remarkable performance.

'I forgot where I was,' she said when Poppy teased her when after the curtain had fallen for having to scrub at her eyes to make them take in the reality of her surroundings again. 'It's all you can hope to do, of course, but it's something else to be on the receiving end of a performance like that. Almost like dreaming awake.'

Poppy shook her head in incomprehension, but Nan said, 'Exactly like that. I used to think it was only good books that could do that –I've learned over the years watching Mara and the others that it's all art that does that at its best.'

'What's all this,' asked Mara, materialising from nowhere and falling in with them as they left the hall.

'Nothing really,' said Di, 'they've been offering up accolades you'll only wave away if they say them where you can hear. Will you miss it, do you think?'

'I almost certainly would if my set hadn't found a way to stay together. It may come to nothing of course,' said Mara with a shrug, 'but for the time being I'm hopeful. Between getting you and Mouse back, and that grant from the college, I'm starting to remember how that works.'

'Good,' said Poppy, worming her way in-between Di and Mara and linking their elbows through hers. 'Something else for you to add to that list; we're holding our own in Italy. All the news is saying so.'

'Doesn't she know an awful lot about it all of a sudden?' said Di with a tug at a stray curl on Poppy's forehead.

'Well I have time to read the papers now that exams are past,' said Poppy.

'And to go walking on Peter's arm of an evening,' said Mara with a laugh. 'I might be keeping weird hours between rehearsals and performances, Mouse, but I _do_ notice what's in front of my nose.'

'Whatever gives you the impression it's all talk of the war?' said Poppy. She was trying simultaneously to suppress her own laughter and sound indignant. She managed neither.

'All right, I recant,' said Mara, 'It will all be early renaissance poetry. I was forgetting …'The laughter that Mara had so far kept at bay came to life then and Poppy swatted ineffectually at her with that evening's program.

'Mouse I _know_ you,' said Mara as she fended her off. 'Both of you. Of course it's all war-talk and strategy.'

'Do make her be serious,' Poppy said plaintively to the others.

'Not on your life,' said Nan. 'I got my share of that while you and Di were ill. It was disconcerting in the extreme.'

'I was afraid you'd say that,' said Poppy and they tumbled into Swallowgate high in spirits and short on sleep, giddy with the effects of both.

* * *

And then, without their seeming to realise it, Graduation was upon them. The day dawned early a fine wash of rose and gold that woke them all and filled them with the nervous prickle of anticipation. Sleep being impossible they converged among the squashy chairs and the end tables with their shepherdesses and drank in the first watery daylight and listening to the swallows chattering among the eaves.

'Nervous?' said Jo as she joined them with a tray of breakfast things. She spread the contents on the floor and the others hummed assent as they divided the cherry blossom china between one another.

'You'll be fine,' she said by way of reassurance. 'Very like prize day at school I expect.'

'I'll remind you of that in roughly four years, shall I?' said Poppy, as her eyes went wide and owlish in an improbable combination of solemnity and mirth.

'Yes, do,' said Mara. 'It doesn't _feel_ the same at any rate. Much more like registering our first year, do you remember?'

'Goodness yes,' said Nan reminiscently, 'how we felt the older students _stared_!'

'We were so sure we'd never settle,' said Di.

'What happened to change that?' asked Jo, passing round a platter of buttered toast.

'Oh well, we…what did we do?' asked Poppy, brought up unexpectedly short.

'Do you know,' said Di thoughtfully, 'that part I can't remember. We just suddenly fit.'

'Let me think,' said Nan, 'Poppy took in Pilgrim, who promptly adopted Mara, she and Di wrangled forever over the kitchen…Faith broke one of the shepherdesses and involved us with the College Red Cross almost at once and…I don't know. Suddenly everything came together like puzzle pieces. I don't think there was a how.'

'If you can't parse it,' said Mara warmly, 'then it really is a lost cause. I'm glad it worked out, whatever the root cause.'

With that they could all heartily agree.

* * *

By midmorning they were involved in the myriad rituals that inevitably proceed occasions such as graduations. The narrow confines of the upstairs hall were thick with the steam of the tin bath as well as the competing scents they daubed on their wrists and necks, Nan's apple blossom, Poppy's lily-of-the-valley mingling dizzily with the orange-blossom-and-iris fragrance Mara wore on good occasions and Di's lavender oil. They drifted down the hall like fine and heady mist while the house buzzed with the uncertain chatter of four girls trying to dress, pin hair and fasten clasps all at once. Too restless to stay in one place they darted in and out of each other's rooms tracking down gloves, slippers, handkerchiefs, and all those little things that they had never missed until suddenly they had need of them.

This agreeable bustle was penetrated about midmorning by an impatient rapping at the door.

'You go, said Di to Nan, 'you're forwarder than the rest of us.'

Nan went, a vision of gold–embossed organdie, her hair half-pinned and streaming down her back in glossy chestnut coils, tortoiseshell combs in one hand, a sting of amber beads in the other and a creamy silk wrap trailing from her arms. By the time she had negotiated the end tables and found her way into the hall, the door was ajar and Mother's voice was saying, 'I did _warn_ you we'd be ages too early. There's always such a lot of _polish_ required when we have to dress for an occasion. Would we had some equivalent to your prescriptive suits.'

' _Mums_ ,' said Nan and ran, combs, beads, shawl and all into her mother's arms. 'We weren't expecting you until afternoon.'

'We caught the express,' said Anne, neatly extracting the beads from her daughter's right hand and fastening them at her throat. 'Someone,' with the tug of a smile at her mouth, 'was anxious we wouldn't secure seats if we left it too late.' She shot an expressive look at Gilbert, an impressive feet under the circumstances since he was mired under a stack of boxes.

'Here,' said Nan, 'I'll help with those. What are they, by the by?'

'Open them and see,' said Gilbert.

On inspection these yielded up flowers, lily-f-the-valley for Di, softly golden roses for Nan, a clutch of lady's smock and bluebells for Mara and smiling red poppies for Poppy.

'You really needn't have, you know,' said Poppy, even as she laughed and bestowed a hug on him.

'Of course I did,' said Gilbert seriously. 'We could hardly leave you out, Mouse.'

'If it comes to that,' said Mara, fingers still working through the tracery of the lady's smock, 'you would have been forgiven for omitting my share too.'

'I would _not_.' Gilbert was indignant. 'I received very strict instructions about those. They're not from us.'

'Oh, I see.' Mara surfaced the card then nestled among the stalks, and as the others folded around her, tucked it into the sleeve of her dress. This did nothing to stop the others descending on her in an attempt to read the contents.

'You'll tell us later,' said Poppy, 'you always _do_.'

'Later,' agreed Mara. 'Presently I'd rather like the secret against getting through the day.'

'Oh all right,' said Nan, affecting to be stung to no very convincing effect. Her own arms were full of yellowy roses and there was a letter from Jerry wishing her luck folded into the bodice of her dress; she could afford to be indulgent.

'You'll wear them well,' said Di of the flowers.

'Of course she will,' said Poppy, with all the warmth of one trying not to laugh. 'They're faerie flowers, aren't they? Mum would never have them in the house. Though,' with a smile, 'I should think if anyone can wear them with safety, it's you, Ariel.'

That made them laugh, the sound of it dappling the walls like sunlight. When the spell had passed Anne clapped her hands and said with enthusiasm, 'Come on, as we're early, tell me how I can be helpful? The last hour or two before a graduation is always chaos.' If she had expected protestations, they didn't come. Four girls flocked round her brimful of petitions and while Gilbert went to scare up dinner she fussed and fretted over the girls of Swallowgate much as she had once done for those at Patty's Place moons ago.

* * *

The ceremony couldn't decide how to proceed. In spots it felt as though time was running backwards, the arts department brimful of unfamiliar names and faces. There were whole departments that they had not only overlooked, but never heard of. Who would ever have imagined Redmond was home to a School of Philology? Or that it was possible to devote three years of doctoral study to the ruminations of Guthlac on the Welsh? But then there were moments when the girls blinked and found themselves in the row filing into the wings, or hovering in anticipatory fashion at the top left of the stage. Still more quickly passed the encounter with the Dean of Students. It seemed they flew rather than crossed the stage, and had barely knelt at the podium before they had been hooded and handed their diplomas. It didn't go nearly so quickly though as to preclude them each in turn worrying about tripping at the eleventh hour. That none of them did was a revelation that left them giddy with relief and ebbing nervousness.

'You were _wonderful_ ,' said Anne afterwards when she and Gilbert found them waiting in the quad on the heels of the academic procession. She pulled them, gowns hoods, diplomas and all into her arms and hugged them hard.

'I knew they would be,' said Gilbert, joining in the hug.

'Remind me,' said Anne over her daughters' heads, 'when was the last time you did this? Recently, was it?' But she was too happy to tease with anything like efficacy. They all laughed and the girls suffered themselves to be shepherded into the garden party and handed little plates of bite-sized foodstuffs, a welcome relief since no one had had any appetite for breakfast, or elevenses, or dinner that day.

They threaded arms the better to cleave together and wove their way through the canvas marquee with its masses of people, talking in remember-whens and reminiscences. Spotting the Blakes, Anne and Gilbert gently detached themselves from the girls, joining with their own friends in an animated knot, even as Ruthie fell into step with them, lacing Di's elbow through hers. Shortly thereafter the Blythes returned to tell them goodbye, bestowing kisses on their foreheads as they went.

'We'll be at Patterson Street,' said Anne cheerily, 'debating the respective merits of Corvedale, Darby and King James into the small hours, in the unlikely event you feel a need for us dull old people.'

The girls laughed at the thought of Mrs Blythe -of Mother –as old, but she waved away their protestations with an elegant hand and a peel of silvery laughter. 'I remember,' she said, 'the magic of a graduation dance. One last golden revel –and grown-ups have no place in it whatever. Wear resilient shoes, laugh lots, enjoy yourselves and _promise_ to return with at least one or two stories to tell me?'

The girls duly promised, and then set off for Swallowgate to finesse last-minute touches to their costumes before heading out for the dance.

* * *

It was indeed a golden revel –Anne Blythe's phrase proved more than apt. It came as no surprise to find the girls outnumbered the boys, and that being the case the girls who pinned hopes danced on each other's arms late into the evening their slippered feet seeming to fly in response to the music. To Di's protestations that she couldn't waltz, had never been able to, Mara laughed and said, 'Of course you can –it's turning a circle in three,' and to prove a point, pulled her friend laughing into the confusion of a circle waltz. It was a progressive affair, and more than one person lost their place as the dance advanced, but no one minded. Mhari's Wedding followed and there was much laughter when girls slipped left shoulders instead of right in their confusion. As Nan said when they surfaced, sore-toed and breathless, 'I thought I knew that one –but of course it's only the lady's side I can dance!'

'Sometimes we doubled up in school,' said Mara, 'but then we wore armbands to tell who was who. No such luck this evening.'

'Goodness,' said Poppy laughing, 'I'd forgotten that!'

'You can't complain,' said Di affectionately. Poppy had turned that dance on Peter's arm and been much the best of them in its execution.

They ran gaily through a Riverside Reel, set and balanced their way through The Dashing White Sergeant, whirled through a circassian circle and collapsed, half-exhausted half-invigorated at the end of the Occadian Strip the Willow. They had barely caught their breath when the violins began to hum and the flutes to whistle, calling the dancers back for one last _Auld Lang Syne_ to close out the set. Somehow the girls summoned the energy to fall into the circle and sing lustily, linking crossed arms on the second verse. It came as no surprise when afterwards the musicians segued into a wild and swirling rhythm that swithered between a polka, a waltz and a reel as the case might be. And because there was no knowing when they would next be together like this they joined hands, Nan, Di, Poppy and Mara, with Jo and the Blake lasses too, and eyes bright and skirts twirling, spun in a ring, feet deftly negotiating a strathsphey at ever-increasing speed until at last, dizzy and laughing they fell in a tangle on the floor.

Thereafter the indefatigable musicians began more fashionable dances, stately waltzes and one-steps and fox-trots. Some of the company stepped out onto the floor, improbably cool and graceful after the glad riot of the last three hours. From the shelter of a side table, Poppy clutched a glass of water in one hand and pressed the other firmly to her abdomen, demanding of the others 'How can they possibly…'

'Goodness knows,' said Mara.

'I rather suspect they'll be the ones that declined to negotiate an eightsome reel earlier,' said Di, scrubbing at the back of her neck with a handkerchief. 'That was gruelling.'

'Good fun though,' said Nan. 'I wouldn't have missed it for the world. I might even,' she said brushing escaped ringlets off her forehead, 'have mustered the energy for the odd two-step if Jerry were here. He's rather good at leading those.'

'That's really the trick of it, isn't it?' said Mara. 'The right company and you feel you could go on dancing forever, or at least all through the night.'

Murmurs of agreement came from all sides of their little sequestered card table. They began to pick up and fuss with beaded purses and Nan turned to Poppy and said, 'Will you stay the evening out Mouse?'

'No,' said Poppy, still pink-cheeked with energy, 'I'm exactly where I want to be. Peter has the sense to know it too. Shall we away?'

The others chorused assent; their feet were worn seemingly to the bone, breath was in short supply and they were pleasantly over-warm with exertion. No one was quite ready to call it an evening though, and so, too high-spirited and heart bright for sleep they retreated to the shelter of the sycamores and the Swallowgate garden, Jo and Naomi following at their heels like devoted spaniels in their eagerness to be included. And of course they were, effortlessly, easily, even fondly. The sky was a band of velvet, the stars diamonds scattered across it. They lay on the ground, heads pillowed on hands, tracing the patterns they made, catching here the summer triangle, there the swollen-bellied W of Cassiopia, and far to the left, almost overlooking the neighbouring garden, Corona Borealis, Gemma winking at its centre.

'Mother would tell us to wish on them,' said Di, 'but there's no discovering which came to light first now.'

'Much better wish over the fire,' said Nan. She hauled herself up onto her knees and began scrabbling in the grass for things to start one from. She built it first from slivers of golden birch and the twigs nesting swallows had let fall. There being an insufficiency of wood for a log-cabin she made a tepee of what was available before setting it alight.

'Here,' said Mara, 'something to wish on.' Carefully she fed a handful of yellow-headed stalks of elfwort into the fledgling flames. Then the logs caught and the fire flared to life, the smell of the elfwort thick around them. Long afterwards, in spite of other fires and other memories they would all of them catch the smell of elfwort with its heady savour of peppermint and associate it with Swallowgate and summer.

'Do you know the girls joining you?' Poppy asked her sister.

'No,' said Jo. 'Only Naomi. We'll meet the others together when the term starts, I expect.'

'That can work,' said Nan.

'So I've heard tell,' said Mara.

'I've even heard some call it a success,' said Di.

Jo and Naomi Blake laughed. 'If we have half your luck,' said Jo, 'we'll have done well.'

'What should we know about it? This from Naomi.

'The blue dachshunds on the mantle are Augie and Buffy. He sits to the left and she to the right,' said Nan. 'We never did find out what Augie was short for.'

'Beware the garden equipment,' said Mara. 'Always insist Miss Lacey's nephew come to cut the grass, and if you can't, be sure you have a competent nurse on hand.'

'And be careful of the china shepherdesses,' said Di. 'But if they do break, don't grieve them.'

'Always leave room for a cat,' said Poppy. Mara clicked her tongue in dissent but said only, 'Try not to mind the war more than you can help. You have lives to live; live them, don't let it run them for you.'

'Don't let yourselves be bossed overmuch either,' said Poppy, getting into the spirit of the thing, 'but expect _someone_ to do the bossing, at least half the time.'

'Have I _ever_ ' began Mara, but Poppy cut her off, throwing a fistful of elfwort her way. 'For your fire, Ariel. And I never mentioned you.'

'The chimney whistles,' said Di, 'especially in the winter.'

'So do the windows in the tower room,' said Mara. 'You can stop it up with tea towels, but you leave it to late you fid you miss the noise.'

'Don't be surprised to find you're suddenly family.'

'Did it happen like that?' asked Jo. Simultaneously Naomi said, 'was it like that with you?'

'Was it like that with us –I'd have to think,' said Di, even as she wound an arm around Poppy and hugged her close.

'Nan you'll remember.'

'Yes, Nan has a gift for saying things like that.'

'Oh stop,' said Nan. She was laughing. She caught her breath and said thoughtfully, 'What happened with us…I think, yes…it was like this; long ago in Kingsport, in 1914 when the war was young and faith was rationed, all the best people were hopeful. And few were more hopeful, as hopeful people come, than the girls of Swallowgate, whether they sat sewing among shepherdesses and end tables by first light or leaned out the back door to catch the evensong of the swallows dreaming of what would come; love and friendship, the end of the war like a banner of purple dight. They seemed to strangers to be brimful of the promises of unseen tomorrows, but it was youth merely. All the best people were hopeful and no one was more enchanting, more inventive, more sincerely trusting and as it might happen more loyal than the girls who pinned hopes…'

* * *

 _Nan's story-telling here owes a serious debt to Muriel Spark who she hasn't read but I have. In particular it's a nod to The Girls of Slender Means and if you haven't read it, go do that now. It's wonderful._


	33. Chapter 33

_A bit later than I'd intended, and not quite what I'd anticipated writing, here's a chapter to close out the war for you. To everyone who has followed, favourited, reviewed, or just dropped by to read, many thanks. I've enjoyed discovering this world and I hope you have too. I'd love to come back to them someday, so if that's something that would interest you, let me know._

* * *

Faith saw them long before they saw her and at first hardly dared breathe for the reality of it. Standing among the ruin of the harbour they looked like so many birds of paradise, all decked out in what she supposed must once have been their graduation finery. There was sleek, seal-like Poppy, golden Mara, Di like a flame and Nan nut brown and glossy as ever, and radiant with it. Faith raised a hand in greeting, then pulled her cloak tight against her as the sea breeze crept under it and found out the secret corners of her skin and nipped at her throat. The salt and sulphur smell of it was on her hair and in her skin, mixed with the dry parchment scent of sun; if she stuck out her tongue she could almost taste it, the lye soap and gritty musk of others' travel-sickness but none of it mattered. She was pink-cheeked and chapped with fresh air, laughter irrepressible as ever tugging at her mouth at the sight of her friends. In a moment she would run to them and draw them close. The boat jolted into place against the dock and having fairly pushed her way down the gangway, Faith lingered long enough to bend and kiss the earth. It was hard-packed and cakey, slivers of it lodging in her fingers where she pressed them against it. The sight of the harbour, raw and desolate had shaken her more than she had expected, and when she closed her eyes and thought of Di and Mara fighting their way through the throbbing heart of its ruin…a wave of dizziness rocked her and she pressed her fingers deeper into the ground. It was solid, and they were well, and it was _good_ to be home.

Faith did go to them then, frayed edges of her cape billowing with expectation against the rush of her running. She flung her arms wide around them and swept them close, Di, Mara, Poppy, Nan, and for a long moment could only stand rocking with them on the dock inhaling the old smells of home, luxuriating in their reunion. Nan's apple-blossom scent she would know anywhere, likewise the yeast and greenery of Poppy. Traces of the Ingleside kitchen lingered still on Di, and there was something else too, that spoke uneasily to long illness, and Faith brushed pushed it away. There would be time to learn their hurts soon enough. Now she was home and that was enough.

'I've missed you,' she said, her throat tight. 'I've missed you, I've missed you, I've _missed_ you.' The words wove their way into the eyelet lace, of Poppy's collar, but she meant it for all of them, and the sentiment was reciprocal. It washed over the girls who pinned hopes in waves as they kissed cheeks and leaned into hugs.

'We missed _you_!'

'We thought we'd never get you back!'

'It's good to have you home.'

Their breath brushed ticklishly against her ears, her cheeks, her neck as they all spoke at once, unwilling to let her go. They stood uncertainly on the dock, rocking with it and scanning their surroundings for somewhere suitable to sit and talk. There was nowhere of course; the explosion all those years ago had seen to that. There being nowhere better they clambered up onto a pile of neglected lobster traps, Faith's protestations that the girls would tear their dresses notwithstanding. They had three years of separation to make up for and the air buzzed with frenetic chatter as they all fought to talk at once. There were tears and laughter, and then, like a comet shooting across the sky, someone –was it Nan? –asked, 'Where were you when the war ended?' Once, many moons ago, they had fought for control of a kitchen and quizzed each other on where they had been when the war began, fully expecting to see it out together. Now, as the mesh of the lobster nets cut rivets into the soft backs of their knees they poured out stories that ran the gamut from triumphal to unbelieving.

'Anthony Sloane came tearing into the school with a telegraph,' said Nan reminiscently. 'Of course I sent the children home early –there was no teaching anyone anything after that. Even if they had been interested, _I_ couldn't have done it.'

Poppy had been helping to mend a tear in a fence when one of her young nieces had come flying up the lane screaming like a banshee in her excitement, and Poppy had almost taken a finger off in the ensuing chaos.

'We knew weeks before it happened that it was coming,' said Faith when pressed. 'By the time armistice actually happened it was almost anticlimactic.'

Di knew when she arrived at the harbour light to find the flag raised and the resident piper making a magnificent mangle of _The Maple Leaf Forever_.

'What about you, Ariel? You've hardly said a word about it.'

'Oh,' said Mara. 'We were burying wee Maisie, I think.' She sounded exhausted. 'You weren't wrong about knowing heliotrope cyanosis for what it was –but you might have warned me how heartbreakingly lovely it could look. I've never seen anything so unearthly as wee Maisie in her church best among the lilies and blue as our milk.'

'Oh,' said Faith, feeling this syllable deeply inadequate. She knew all too well the bone-deep uselessness that was almost as symptomatic in her book of influenza as heliotrope cyanosis. _I wanted to keep you safe_ stuck painfully in her throat. _I thought if I made a cipher of it, it would pass you by, like the Israelites marking their lintels with lamb's blood_ , lay thick and heavy in her larynx.

'I'm so, so sorry,' she said instead, threading an arm around Mara. They all did.

'Never mind,' said Mara. 'Tell me something nice?'

'Will a wedding do?' asked Poppy and suddenly there was no containing their raptures.

'I told you so, I told you so, _I told you so_!' Faith was triumphant. She leaped off the lobster traps pulling Nan into a raucous waltz, not caring how many eyes it drew.

'Mouse, not us,' said a breathless Nan. ' _We_ never had any quarrel with you on the subject of Peter.'

'No,' said Faith as her breath returned, 'no I suppose you hadn't.'

Poppy was struggling to say _something_ coherent and Di cut her off saying, 'You can hardly protest _now_ Mouse,' and to Faith, 'you'll be pleased to know Mara fought your corner valiantly for you after you'd abandoned us.'

'Did she?' said Faith, even as she turned to Mara and said, 'I thought you might.'

Mara had got Poppy's hands in hers and was making a general fuss over the little sliver of silver and sapphire that had belonged to Peter's grandmother.

'Why did you never say?'

'Why do you think?' asked Nan, a smile in her voice. 'She _knew_ you two would react this way. I'm right, aren't I, Mouse?'

'I might have entertained the thought,' said Poppy. She was trying to be serious but a smile was tugging at the corners of her mouth and trying to encompass even her eyes. 'Though really, I wanted to wait and tell you all at once.'

'We must celebrate,' said Faith. 'Where shall we go? I'm sure some of that grant money can stretch to cover a celebratory feast.'

'There,' said Poppy with satisfaction. 'I knew you'd want an occasion. We were so starved for them before, and it's _good_ to be able to give you one.'

* * *

Much animated discussion bringing no consensus there was nothing for it but to take the train into Kingsport. It had been theirs once, after all, and they knew it. When they had wandered the wynds and closes to no avail though there was nothing for it but to go into the woods, to the brown babbling brook, the grove of beeches, birches and lilac that had come to feel their private haven, and there they easily fell into their old roles. Nan built up an expert fire, Mara lay flat on her stomach among the long grass, one hand submerged in water the better to lure fish. Poppy searched for makeshift plates and Di for edible herbs to season the fish with. Their one concession to town, a box of dainty petit-fours, Faith cradled to her and thought how strange it was that some people one could live with for years and never know, and others one met and understood in a minute, heart, mind and soul, and when that happened time could build as effective a wall of Jericho as it liked and one would _still_ be able to sit and talk as if mere seconds had elapsed on reunion instead of years.

' _Bon accord,_ ' said Mara as she wrestled a writhing trout from the stream and Faith realised she had spoken aloud.

'Hm?'

'What you say at a parting,' said Mara by way of elaboration. ' _We meet to say goodbye to meet again_ it means. It's not really –I mean it wasn't our part of Scotland as said it –but it's what you mean, I think.'

' _We meet to say goodbye to meet again_ ,' said Faith trying the words in her mouth. 'You know, I believe it is.'

It was a faerie feast really, scantier even than the pick-up supper that had witnessed Jem's return. They rubbed the fish in wild thyme and bay leaves and blistered their fingers in the eating of it. It tasted of the brook it had come from, and the heart of the fire, the smoke and the woody musk of the thyme and bay, as well as the savour of reunion. That was probably why when it spackled their hands with the scales Di's knife had missed and rendered their hands almost translucent in the sunlight, or fell piping hot onto their knees and scorched them, no one noticed. They had years of news to catch up on, and in the sun-dappled grove of beeches and birches they did their best to cram it all into the pauses between mouthfuls. No one could get used to the idea that this was the pattern now, that normalcy had come back and the future was brimful of glad, golden days.

* * *

Afterwards, when they had eaten their fill, they revisited all their old haunts. The Martello tower and the duck pond at the park, thick that summer with duckweed and smelling strongly of sedge and wet leaves, the library where they had spent hours reading themselves into trances induced as much by the combined smell of ink and old book as by the closeness of the type and dimness of the light, the convocation hall that had brought them so much revelry and respite. They were at Swallowgate almost before they had thought to go there. Di eased the wrought-iron gate open and they drifted into the yard. The geraniums were heat-sore and neglected, the net curtains drawn, the ivy half-wild, but still it seemed to welcome them, the blue door sedate and inviting as ever.

'Of course,' said Nan as a sleeper awaking, 'they've no reason to stay through the summers –I never thought.'

'Nor I,' said Poppy. 'But of course they'll want to be home between terms. I'm glad.'

'How do they get on?' asked Faith, who had met none of Swallowgate's inheritors and was keenly curious.

'I thought you'd ask,' said Nan. She reached into her sleeve and extracted a neatly folded epistle covered in spindly writing.

'From Naomi,' she said. 'Our resident English scholar.'

Not only Faith, but Mara, Poppy and Di all flocked round to read it.

 _If you've had Ruthie's letter_ , it ran, _then you'll know we've all settled beautifully into Swallowgate. This includes the two fellow first years we spoke of after graduation. They were waiting to meet us in the garden…_ and so it ran on. There was a detailed account of the new friends she and Jo had made, the division of the rooms, and an exacting, if tongue-in-cheek recapitulation of the struggle for the kitchen.

'Sound like anyone we know?' said Nan, and they all laughed. Then, handing the letter to Di, she darted forward and kissed the much-worn doorstep, and laid a hand against the blue door.

'We'll find a way back to you,' she said for all of them, 'but until we do, _bon accord_.'

The goodbye rippled silvery as swallow-song round the garden. With all the gravity of ritual they took it in turn to kiss the stoop before linking arms and turning for home. Shortly they would part, but the future lay before them a slender cord of rope inviting of time enough and world enough to meet and part and meet again as often and gladly as they could hope for. Once such a future been little more than a soap bubble of a dream, but now it was before them, and it was theirs.

 _Fin._


End file.
